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)F ALL THINGS 



BY 



ROBERT C. BENCHLEY 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1921 



■vv 



t 






COPTKISHT, 1921, 
BY 

HENEY HOLT AND COMPANY 



'8 mi 



S)GUS30379 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A^ BY 

tKbe &ninn & j Bcbtn Cxnrcpmap 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 



TO 

Henry Bessemer 

Without whose tireless patience, unswerving 
industry and inexhaustible zeal the Bessemer 
steel converter would never have become a 
reality, this book is affectionately dedicated by 

The Author. 



These sketches appeared originally in Vanity Fair, The 
New York Tribune Sunday Magazine, Collier's Weekly, 
Life, and Motor Print, all but two of these magazines 
immediately afterward having either discontinued pub- 
lication or changed hands. To those which are old 
enough to remember, and to the new managements of 
the others, the author offers grateful acknowledgment for 
permission to reprint the material in this book. (As a 
matter of fact, permission was never asked, but they 
probably won't mind anyway.) 



PREFACE 

When, in the Course of human events, it becomes 
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 
which have connected them with another, and to assimie 
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal 
station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's 
God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of 
mankind requires that they should declare the causes 
which impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, — that all men 
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are 
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to 
secure these rights. Governments are instituted among 
Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed, — That whenever any Form of Government be- 
comes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the 
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new 
Government, laying its foundation on such principles 
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall 
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long 
established should not be changed for light and transient 
causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that 
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are suf- 
ferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms 
to which they are accustomed. But when a long train 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same 
Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute 
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off 
such Government, and to provide new Guards for their 
own future security. Such has been the patient suf- 
ferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity 
which constrains them to alter their former Systems of 
Government. The history of the present King of Great 
Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, 
all having in direct object the establishment of an abso- 
lute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts 
be submitted to a candid world. 

R.. C. B. 

"The Rookery" 
Breeming Downs 
Wippet-cum-Twyne 
New York City 
August 24, 1921 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Social Life of the Newt . . 3 

II " Coffee, Megg and Ilk, Please " 10 

III When Genius Remained Your 

Humble Servant 18 

IV The Tortures of Week-End Visit- 

ing 32 

V Gardening Notes 43 

VI Lesson Number One .... 52 

VII Thoughts on Fuel Saving ... 65 

VIII Not According to Hoyle ... 77 

IX From Nine to Five 89 

X Turning Over a New Ledger Leaf 102 

XI A Piece of Roast Beef . . . . no 

XII The Community Masque as a Sub- 
stitute for War 121 

XIII Call for Mr. Kenworthy! . . 130 

XIV Football; Courtesy of Mr. Morse 142 
XV A Little Debit in Your Tonneau 153 

XVI A Romance IN Encyclopedia Land 161 
XVII The Passing of the Orthodox 

Paradox 168 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVIII Shakespeare Explained . . 175 

XIX The Scientific Scenario . . . 180 
XX The Most Popular Book of the 

Month 187 

XXI Christmas Afternoon .... 193 

XXII Hall, Vernal Equinox! . . . 200 

TABLOID EDITIONS 

The American Magazine . . . 213 

Harper's Magazine 220 

The Saturday Evening Post . . 228 



OF ALL THINGS! 



I 

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEWT 

IT is not generally known that the newt, although 
one of the smallest of our North American ani- 
mals, has an extremely happy home-life. It is just 
one of those facts which never get bruited about. 




" Since that time I have practically lived among the newts." 

I first became interested in the social phenomena 
of newt life early in the spring of 1913, shortly 
after I had finished my researches in sexual differ- 
entiation among ameba. Since that time I have 
practically lived among newts, jotting down observa- 
tions, making lantern-slides, watching them in their 
work and in their play (and you may rest assured 
that the little rogues have their play — as who does 
not?) until, from much lying in a research posture 
on my stomach, over the inclosure in which they 
were confined, I found myself developing what I 

[3] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

feared might be rudimentary creepers. And so, late 
this autumn, I stood erect and walked into my house, 
where I immediately set about the compilation of the 
notes I had made. 

So much for the non-technical introduction. The 
remainder of this article bids fair to be fairly scien- 
tific. 

In studying the more intimate phases of newt life, 
one is chiefly impressed with the methods by means 
of which the males force their attentions upon the 
females, with matrimony as an object. For the newt 
is, after all, only a newt, and has his weaknesses 
just as any of the rest of us. And I, for one, would 
not have it different. There is little enough fun in 
the world as it is. 

The peculiar thing about a newt's courtship is 
its restraint. It is carried on, at all times, with 
a minimum distance of fifty paces (newt measure) 
between the male and the female. Some of the 
bolder males may now and then attempt to over- 
step the bounds of good sportsmanship and crowd 
in to forty-five paces, but such tactics are frowned 
upon by the Rules Committee. To the eye of an 
uninitiated observer, the pair might be dancing a few 
of the more open figures of the minuet. 

The means employed by the males to draw the 
attention and win the affection of those of the op- 

[4] 



THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEWT 

posite sex (females) are varied and extremely strate- 
gic. Until the valuable researches by Strudlehoff in 
1887 (in his " Entwickelungsmechanik '') no one 
had been able to ascertain just what it was that the 
male newt did to make the female see anything 
in him worth throwing herself away on. It had been 
observed that the most personally unattractive newt 
could advance to within fifty paces of a female of 
his acquaintance and, by some coup d'ceil, bring her 
to a point where she would, in no uncertain terms, 
indicate her willingness to go through with the mar- 
riage ceremony at an early date. 

It was Strudlehoff who discovered, after watch- 
ing several thousand courting newts under a mag- 
nifying lens (questionable taste on his part, with- 
out doubt, but all is fair in pathological love) that 
the male, during the courting season (the season 
opens on the tenth of March and extends through 
the following February, leaving about ten days for 
general overhauling and redecorating) gives forth 
a strange, phosphorescent glow from the center of 
his highly colored dorsal crest, somewhat similar in 
effect to the flash of a diamond scarf-pin in a red 
necktie. This glow, according to Strudlehoff, so 
fascinates the female with its air of elegance and 
indication of wealth, that she immediately falls a 
victim to its lure. 

[5] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

But the little creature, true to her sex-instinct, 
does not at once give evidence that her morale has 
been shattered. She affects a coyness and lack of 
interest, by hitching herself sideways along the bot- 
tom of the aquarium, with her head turned over her 
right shoulder away from the swain. A trained ear 
might even detect her whistling in an indifferent 
manner. 

The male, in the meantime, is flashing his gleamer 
frantically two blocks away and is performing all 
sorts of attractive feats, calculated to bring the lady 
newt to terms. I have seen a male, in the stress 
of his handicap courtship, stand on his fore-feet, 
gesticulating in amorous fashion with hi3 hind feet 
in the air. Franz Ingehalt, in his " Uber Welt- 
schmerz des Newt," recounts having observed a dis- 
tinct and deliberate undulation of the body, begin- 
ning with the shoulders and ending at the filament 
of the tail, which might well have been the origin 
of what is known to-day in scientific circles as " the 
shimmy." The object seems to be the same, except 
that in the case of the newt, it is the male who is 
the active agent. 

In order to test the power of observation in the 
male during these manoeuvers, I carefully removed 
the female, for whose benefit he was undulating, and 
put in her place, in slow succession, another (but 

[6] 



THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEWT 

less charming) female, a paper-weight of bronze 
shaped like a newt, and, finally, a common rubber 
eraser. From the distance at which the courtship 
was being carried on, the male (who was, it must 
be admitted, a bit near-sighted congenitally) was 
unable to detect the change in personnel, and con- 
tinued, even in the presence of the rubber eraser, 
to gyrate and undulate in a most conscientious man- 
ner, still under the impression that he was making 
a conquest. 

At last, worn out by his exertions, and disgusted 
at the meagerness of the reaction on the eraser, 
he gave a low cry of rage and despair and stag- 
gered to a nearby pan containing barley-water, from 
which he proceeded to drink himself into a gross 
stupor. 

Thus, little creature, did your romance end, and 
who shall say that its ending was one whit less tragic 
than that of Camille? Not I, for one. . . . In fact, 
the two cases are not at all analogous. 

And now that we have seen how wonderfully Na- 
ture works in the fulfilment of her laws, even among 
her tiniest creatures, let us study for a minute a 
cross-section of the community-life of the newt. It 
is a life full of all kinds of exciting adventure, from 
weaving nests to crawling about in the sun and 
catching insect larvse and crustaceans. The newt's 

[7] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

day is practically never done, largely because the 
insect larvae multiply three million times as fast as 
the newt can possibly catch and eat them. And it 
takes the closest kind of community team-work in 
the newt colony to get things anywhere near cleaned 
up by nightfall. 

It is early morning, and the workers are just 
appearing, hurrying to the old log which is to be 
the scene of their labors. What a scampering! 
What a bustle! Ah, little scamperers! Ah, little 
bustlers! How lucky you are, and how wise! You 
work long hours, without pay, for the sheer love 
of working. An ideal existence, I'll tell the scien- 
tific world. 

Over here on the right of the log are the Master 
Draggers. Of all the newt workers, they are the 
most futile, which is high praise indeed. Come, 
let us look closer and see what it is that they are 
doing. 

The one in the lead is dragging a bit of gurry out 
from the water and up over the edge into the sun- 
light. Following him, in single file, come the rest 
of the Master Draggers. They are not dragging 
anything, but are sort of helping the leader by 
crowding against him and eating little pieces out 
of the filament of his tail. 

And now they have reached the top. The leader, 

[8] 



THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEWT 

by dint of much leg-work, has succeeded in dragging 
his prize to the ridge of the log. 

The little workers, reaching the goal with their 
precious freight, are now giving it over to the 
Master Pushers, who have been waiting for them in 
the sun all this while. The Master Pushers' work 
is soon accomplished, for it consists simply in push- 
ing the piece of gurry over the other side of the 
log until it falls with a splash into the water, where 
it is lost. 

This part of their day's task finished, the tiny 
toilers rest, clustered together in a group, waving 
their heads about from side to side, as who should 
say: "There — that's done! " And so it is done, 
my little Master Draggers and my little Master 
Pushers, and well done, too. Would that my own 
work were as clean-cut and as satisfying. 

And so it goes. Day in and day out, the busy 
army of newts go on making the world a better 
place in which to live. They have their little trials 
and tragedies, it is true, but they also have their 
fun, as any one can tell by looking at a logful of 
sleeping newts on a hot summer day. 

And, after all, what more has life to offer? 



[9] 



II 

" COFFEE, MEGG AND ILK, PLEASE " 

GIVE me any topic in current sociology, such 
as " The Working Classes vs. the Working 
Classes," or "Various Aspects of the Minimum 
Wage," and I can talk on it with considerable con- 
fidence. I have no hesitation in putting the Work- 
ingman, as such, in his place among the hewers of 
wood and drawers of water — a necessary adjunct 
to our modern life, if you will, but of little real 
consequence in the big events of the world. 

But when I am confronted, in the flesh, by the 
" close up " of a workingman with any vestige of 
authority, however small, I immediately lose my 
perspective — and also my poise. I become servile, 
almost cringing. I feel that my modest demands on 
his time may, unless tactfully presented, be offensive 
to him and result in something, I haven't been able 
to analyze just what; perhaps public humiliation. 

For instance, whenever I enter an elevator in a 
public building I am usually repeating to myself the 
number of the floor at which I wish to alight. The 
elevator man gives the impression of being a social 

[lO] 



"COFFEE, MEGG AND ILK" 

worker, filling the job just for that day to help 
out the regular elevator man, and I feel that the 
least I can do is to show him that I know what's 
what. So I don't tell him my floor number as soon 
as I get in. Only elderly ladies do that. I keep 
whispering it over to myself, thinking to tell it to 
the world when the proper time comes. But then 
the big question arises — what is the proper time? 
If I want to get out at the eighteenth floor, should 
I tell him at the sixteenth or the seventeenth? I 
decide on the sixteenth and frame my lips to say, 
"Eighteen out, please." (Just why one should 
have to add the word " out " to the number of the 
floor is not clear. When you say " eighteen " the 
obvious construction of the phrase is that you want 
to get out at the eighteenth floor, not that you 
want to get in there or be let down through the 
flooring of the car at that point. However, you'll 
find the most sophisticated elevator riders, namely, 
messenger boys, always adding the word " out," and 
it is well to follow what the messenger boys do in 
such matters if you don't want to go wrong.) 

So there I am, mouthing the phrase, " Eighteen 
out, please," as we shoot past the tenth — eleventh — 
twelfth — thirteenth floors. Then I begin to get 
panicky. Supposing that I should forget my lines! 
Or that I should say them too soon! Or too late! 

[11] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

We are now at the fifteenth floor. I clear my throat. 
Sixteen! Hoarsely I murmur, "Eighteen out." 
But at the same instant a man with a cigar in his 
mouth bawls, " Seventeen out! " and I am not heard. 




"At the same instant a man with a cigar in his mouth bawls, 

* Seventeen out I * " 



The car stops at seventeen, and I step confidentially 
up to the elevator man and repeat, with an attempt 
at nonchalance, " Eighteen out, please." But just 
as I say the words the door clangs, drowning out 
my request, and we shoot up again. I make an- 
other attempt, but have become inarticulate and 
succeed only in making a noise like a man stran- 

[12] 



"COFFEE, MEGG AND ILK" 

gling. And by this time we are at the twenty-first 
floor with no reliel in sight. Shattered, I retire to 
the back of the car and ride up to the roof and 
down again, trying to look as if I worked in the 
building and had to do it, however boresome it 
might be. On the return trip I don't care what 
the elevator man thinks of me, and tell him at 
every floor that I, personally, am going to get off 
at the eighteenth, no matter what any one else 
in the car does. I am dictatorial enough when I 
am riled. It is only in the opening rounds that I 
hug the ropes. 

My timidity when dealing with minor officials 
strikes me first in my voice. I have any number 
of witnesses who will sign statements to the effect 
that my voice changed about twelve years ago, and 
that in ordinary conversation my tone, if not espe- 
cially virile, is at least consistent and even. But 
when, for instance, I give an order at a soda foun- 
tain, if the clerk overawes me at all, my voice breaks 
into a yodel that makes the phrase "Coffee, egg and 
milk " a pretty snatch of song, but practically worth- 
less as an order. 

If the soda counter is lined with customers and 
the clerks so busy tearing up checks and dropping 
them into the toy banks that they seem to resent 
any call on their drink-mixing abilities, I might just 

[13] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

as well save time and go home and shake up an egg 
and milk for myself, for I shall not be waited on 
until every one else has left the counter and they 
are putting the nets over the caramels for the night. 
I know that. IVe gone through it too many times 
to be deceived. 

For there is something about the realization that 
I must shout out my order ahead of some one else 
that absolutely inhibits my shouting powers. I will 
stand against the counter, fingering my ten-cent 
check and waiting for the clerk to come near enough 
for me to tell him what I want, while, in the mean- 
time, ten or a dozen people have edged up next to 
me and given their orders, received their drinks 
and gone away. Every once in a while I catch a 
clerk's eye and lean forward murmuring, " Coffee " 
— but that is as far as I get. Some one else has 
shoved his way in and shouted, " Coca-Cola," and 
I draw back to get out of the way of the vichy spray. 
(Incidentally, the men who push their way in and 
footfault on their orders always ask for " Coca- 
Cola." Somehow it seems like painting the lily for 
them to order a nerve tonic.) 

I then decide that the thing for me to do is to 
speak up loud and act brazenly. So I clear my 
throat, and, placing both hands on the counter, emit 
what promises to be a perfect bellow: " COFFEE, 

[14] 



"COFFEE, MEGG AND ILK'' 




"Placing both hands on the counter, I emit what promises to be 

a perfect bellow." 



[IS] 



OF ALL THINGS 1 

MEGG AND ILK." This makes just about the 
impression you'd think it would, both on my neigh- 
bors and the clerk, especially as it is delivered in 
a tone which ranges from a rich barytone to a rather 
rasping tenor. At this I withdraw and go to the 
other end of the counter, where I can begin life 
over again with a clean slate. 

Here, perhaps, I am suddenly confronted by an 
impatient clerk who is in a perfect frenzy to grab 
my check and tear it into bits to drop in his box. 
" What's yours? " he flings at me. I immediately 
lose my memory and forget what it was that I 
wanted. But here is a man who has a lot of people 
to wait on and who doubtless gets paid according 
to the volume of business he brings in. I have no 
right to interfere with his work. There is a big 
man edging his way beside me who is undoubtedly 
going to shout " Coca-Cola " in half a second. So 
I beat him to it and say, " Coca-Cola," which is 
probably the last drink in the store that I want to 
buy. But it is the only thing that I can remember 
at the moment, in spite of the fact that I have been 
thinking all morning how good a coffee, egg and milk 
would taste. I suppose that one of the psychological 
principles of advertising is to so hammer the name 
of your product into the mind of the timid buyer 
that when he is confronted by a brusk demand for 

[i6] 



"COFFEE, MEGG AND ILK'* 

an order he can't think of anything else to say, 
whether he wants it or not. 

This dread of offending the minor official or ap- 
pearing to a disadvantage before a clerk extends 
even to my taking nourishment. I don't think that 
I have ever yet gone into a restaurant and ordered 
exactly what I wanted. If only the waiter would 
give me the card and let me alone for, say, fif- 
teen minutes, as he does when I want to get him 
to bring me my check, I could work out a meal along 
the lines of what I like. But when he stands over 
me, with disgust clearly registered on his face, I 
order the thing I like least and consider myself 
lucky to get out of it with so little disgrace. 

And yet I have no doubt that if one could see 
him in his family life the Workingman is just an 
ordinary person like the rest of us. He is probably 
not at all as we think of him in our dealings with 
him — a harsh, dictatorial, intolerant autocrat, but 
rather a kindly soul who likes nothing better than 
to sit by the fire with his children and read. 

And he would probably be the first person to 
scoff at the idea that he could frighten me. 



[17] 



Ill 

WHEN GENIUS REMAINED YOUR 
HUMBLE SERVANT 

OF course, I really know nothing about it, but 
I would be willing to wager that the last words 
of Penelope, as Odysseus bounced down the front 
steps, bag in hand, were: "Now, don't forget to 
write, Odie. You'll find some papyrus rolled up 
in your clean peplum, and just drop me a line on 
it whenever you get a chance." 

And ever since that time people have been prom- 
ising to write, and then explaining why they haven't 
written. Most personal correspondence of to-day 
consists of letters the first half of which are given 
over to an indexed statement of reasons why the 
writer hasn't written before, followed by one para- 
graph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to 
reasons why it is imperative that the letter be 
brought to a close. So many people begin their 
letters by saying that they have been rushed to death 
(luring the last month, and therefore haven't found 
tim6 to write, that one wonders where all the grown 
persons come from who attend movies at eleven in 

[i8] 



WHEN GENIUS REMAINED 

the morning. There has been a misunderstanding 
of the word " busy " somewhere. 

So explanatory has the method of letter writing 
become that it is probable that if Odysseus were a 
modern traveler his letters home to Penelope would 
average something like this: 

Calypso, 
Friday afternoon. 
Dear Pen: — ^I have been so tied up with work 
during the last week that I haven't had a chance 
to get near a desk to write to you. I have been 
trying to every day, but something would come 
up just at the last minute that would prevent me. 
Last Monday I got the papyrus all unrolled, and 
then I had to tend to Scylla and Charybdis (I may 
have written you about them before), and by the 
time I got through with them it was bedtime, and, 
believe me, I am snatching every bit of sleep I can 
get these days. And so it went, first the Lsestry- 
gones, and then something else, and here it is Fri- 
day. Well, there isn't much news to write about. 
Things are going along here about as usual. There 
is a young nymph here who seems to own the place, 
but I haven't had any chance to meet her socially. 
Well, there goes the ship's bell. I guess I had bet- 
ter be bringing this to a close. I have got a lot 

[19] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

of work to do before I get dressed to go to a dinner 
of that nymph I was telling you about. I have met 
her brother, and he and I are interested in the same 
line of goods. He was at Troy with me. Well, I 
guess I must be closing. Will try to get off a longer 
letter in a day or two. 

Your loving husband, 

Odie. 
P.S. — ^You haven't got that bunch of sports hang- 
ing round the palace still, have you? Tell Telema- 
chus I'll take him out of school if I hear of his play- 
ing around with any of them. 

But there was a time when letter writing was 
such a fad, especially among the young girls, that 
if they had had to choose between eating three meals 
a day and writing a letter they wouldn't have given 
the meals even a consideration. In fact, they 
couldn't do both, for the length of maidenly letters 
in those days precluded any time out for meals. 
They may have knocked off for a few minutes dur- 
'ing the heat of the day for a whiff at a bottle of 
salts, but to nibble at anything heartier than let- 
tuce would have cramped their style. 

Take Miss Clarissa Harlowe, for instance. In 
Richardson's book (which, in spite of my personal 
aversion to it, has been hailed by every great writer, 

[20] 



WHEN GENIUS REMAINED 

from Pope to Stevenson, as being perfectly bully) 
she is given the opportunity of telling 2,400 closely 
printed pages full of story by means of letters to 
her female friend, Miss Howe (who plays a part 
similar to the orchestra leader in Frank Tinney's 
act)^ And 2,400 pages is nothing to her. When 
the book closes she is just beginning to get her 
stride. As soon as she got through with that she 
probably sat down and wrote a series of letters 
to the London papers about the need for conscrip- 
tion to fight the Indians in America. 

To a girl like Clarissa, in the middle of the eight- 
eenth century, no day was too full of horrors, no 
hour was too crowded with terrific happenings to 
prevent her from seating herself at a desk (she must 
have carried the desk about with her, strapped over 
her shoulder) and tearing off twenty or thirty pages 
to Friend Anna, telling her all about it. The only 
way that I can see in which she could accomplish 
this so efficiently would be to have a copy boy stand- 
ing at her elbow, who took the letter, sheet by sheet, 
as she wrote it, and dashed with it to the printer. 

It is hard to tell just which a girl of that period 
considered more important, the experiences she was 
"writing of or the letter itself. She certainly never 
slighted the letter. If the experience wanted to over- 
take her, and jump up on the desk beside her, all 

[21] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

right, but, experience or no experience, she was go- 
ing to get that letter in the next post or die in the 
attempt. Unfortunately, she never died in the 
attempt. 

Thus, an attack on a young lady's house by a 
band of cutthroats, resulting in the burning of the 
structure and her abduction, might have been told 
of in the eighteenth century letter system as fol- 
lows: 

Monday night. 
Sweet Anna: — At this writing I find myself in 
the most horrible circumstance imaginable. Picture 
to yourself, if you can, my dear Anna, a party of 
villainous brigands, veritable cutthroats, all of them, 
led by a surly fellow in green alpaca with white 
insertion, breaking their way, by very force, 
through the side of your domicile, like so many ugly 
intruders, and threatening you with vile impreca- 
tions to make you disclose the hiding place of the 
family jewels. If the mere thought of such a con- 
tingency is painful to you, my beloved Anna, con- 
sider what it means to me, your delicate friend, to 
whom it is actually happening at this very minute! 
For such is in very truth the situation which is 
disclosing itself in my room as I write. Not three 
feet away from me is the odious person before de- 

[22] 



WHEN GENIUS REMAINED 

scribed. Now he is threatening me with renewed 
vigor! Now he has placed his coarse hands on 
my throat, completely hiding the pearl necklace 
which papa brought me from Epsom last summer, 
and which you, and also young Pindleson (whose 
very name I mention with a blush), have so often 
admired. But more of this later, and until then, 
believe me, my dear Anna, to be 

Your ever distressed and affectionate 

Cl. Harlowe. 

Monday night. Later, 
Dearest Anna:^ — ^Now, indeed, it is evident, my 
best, my only friend, that I am face to face with 
the bitterest of fates. You will remember that in 
my last letter I spoke to you of a party of unprin- 
cipled knaves who were invading my apartment. 
And now do I find that they have, in furtherance 
of their inexcusable plans, set fire to that portion 
of the house which lies directly behind this, so 
that as I put my pen to paper the flames are creep- 
ing, like hungry creatures of some sort, through 
the partitions and into this very room, so that did 
I esteem my safety more than my correspondence 
with you, my precious companion, I should at once 
be making preparation for immediate departure. O 
my dear! To be thus seized, as I am at this very 

[23] 



OF ALL THINGS 1 







"To be thus seized . 



. is truly, you will agree, my sweet Anna, 
a pitiable episode." 

[24l 



WHEN GENIUS REMAINED 

instant, by the unscrupulous leader of the band and 
carried, by brute force, down the stairway through 
the butler's pantry and into the servants' hall, writ- 
ing as I go, resting my poor paper on the shoulder 
of my detested abductor, is truly, you will agree, 
my sweet Anna, a pitiable episode. 
Adieu, my intimate friend. 

Your obt. sVt, 

Cl. Harlowe. 

One wonders (or, at least, / wonder, and that is 
sufficient for the purposes of this article) what the 
letter writing young lady of that period would have 
done had she lived in this day of postcards show- 
ing the rocks at Scipawisset or the Free Public Li- 
brary in East Tarvia. She might have used them for 
some of her shorter messages, but I rather doubt it. 
The foregoing scene could hardly have been done 
justice to on a card bearing the picture of the 
Main Street of the town, looking north from the 
Soldiers' Monument, with the following legend: 

" Our house is the third on the left with the lilac 
bush. Cross marks window where gang of rough- 
necks have just broken in and are robbing and 
burning the house. Looks like a bad night. Wish 
you were here. " C. H." 

[25] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

No; that would never have done, but it would 
have been a big relief for the postilion, or whoever 
it was that had to carry Miss Clarissa's effusions to 
their destination. The mail on Monday morning, 
after a springlike Sunday, must have been some- 
thing in the nature of a wagon load of rolls of 
news print that used to be seen standing in front 
of newspaper offices in the good old da5rs when 
newspapers were printed on paper stock. Of course, 
the postilion had the opportunity of whiling away 
the time between stations by reading some of the 
spicier bits in the assortment, but even a postilion 
must have had his feelings, and a man can't read 
that kind of stuff all of the time, and still keep his 
health. 

Of course, there are a great many people now 
who write letters because they like to. Also, there 
are some who do it because they feel that they 
owe it to posterity and to their publishers to do 
so. As soon as a man begins to sniff a chance that 
he may become moderately famous he is apt to 
brush up on his letter writing and never send any- 
thing out that has not been polished and proof- 
read, with the idea in mind that some day some 
one is going to get all of his letters together and 
make a book of them. Apparently, most great men 
whose letters have been published have had premoni- 

[26] 



WHEN GENIUS REMAINED 

tion of their greatness when quite young, as their 
childish letters bear the marks of careful and stud- 
ied attention to publicity values. One can almost 
imagine the budding genius, aged eight, sitting at 
his desk and saying to himself: 




" I must not forget that I am now going 
through the ' Sturm und Drang ' period." 

" In this spontaneous letter to my father I must 
not forget that I am now going through the Sturm 
und Drang (storm and stress) period of my youth 
and that this letter will have to be grouped by the 
compiler under the Sturm und Drang (storm and 
stress) section in my collected letters. I must there- 
fore keep in the key and quote only such of my fa- 

[27] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

vorite authors as will contribute to the effect. I 
think I will use Werther to-day. . . . My dear Fa- 
ther ^ — etc. 

I have not known many geniuses in their youth, 
but I have had several youths pointed out to me 
by their parents as geniuses, and I must confess 
that I have never seen a letter from any one of them 
that differed greatly from the letters of a normal 
boy, unless perhaps they were spelled less accurately. 
Given certain uninteresting conditions, let us say, 
at boarding school, and I believe that the average 
bright boy's letter home would read something in 
this fashion: 

Exeter, N, B., 
Wed., April 25. 
My Dear Father and Mother: 

I have been working pretty hard this week, study- 
ing for a history examination, and so haven't had 
much of a chance to write to you. Everything is 
about the same as usual here, and there doesn't 
seem to be much news to write to you about. The 
box came all right, and thank you very much. All 
the fellows liked it, especially the little apple pies. 
Thank you very much for sending it. There hasn't 
much been happening here since I wrote you last 
week. I had to buy a new pair of running drawers, 

[28] 



;'" 



WHEN GENIUS REMAINED 

which cost me fifty cents. Does that come out of 
my allowance? Or will you pay for it? There 
doesn^t seem to be any other news. Well, there 
goes the bell, so I guess I will be closing. 

Your loving son, 

Buxton. 

Given the same, even less interesting conditions, 
and a boy such as Stevenson must have been (judg- 
ing from his letters) could probably have delivered 
himself of this, and more, too: 

Wyckham-Wyckham, 
The Tenth. 
Dear Pater: — To-day has been unbelievably ex- 
quisite ! Great, undulating clouds, rolling in serried 
formation across a sky of pure lapis lazuli. I feel 
like what Updike calls a " myrmidon of unhesitat- 
ing amplitude." And a perfect gem of a letter from 
Toto completed the felicitous experience. You 
would hardly believe, and yet you must, in your 
cc&ur des coeurs, know, that the brown, esoteric hills 
of this Oriental retreat affect me like the red wine 
of Russilon, and, indigent as I am in these matters, 
I cannot but feel that you have, as Herbert says: 

" Carve or discourse; do not a famine fear. 
Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all" 

[29] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

Yesterday I saw a little native boy, a veritable 
boy of the streets, pla)dng at a game at once so 
naive and so resplendent that I was irresistibly 
drawn to its contemplation. You will doubtless jeer 
when I tell you. He was tossing a ^mall blotch, 
such as grow in great profusion here, to and fro 
between himself and the wall of the limple. I was 
stimned for the moment, and then I realized that 
I was looking into the very soul of the peasantry, 
the open stigma of the nation. How queer it all 
seemed! Did it not? 

You doubtless think me an ungrateful fellow for 
not mentioning the delicious assortment of goodies 
which came, like melons to Artemis, to this be- 
nighted gesellschajt on Thursday last. They were 
devoured to the last crumb, and I was reminded as 
we ate, like so many wurras, of those lines of that 
gorgeous Herbert, of whom I am so fond: 

" Must all be veiled, while he that reads divineSy 
Catching the sense at two removes? " 

The breeze is springing up, and it brings to me 
messages of the open meadows of Litzel, deep fes- 
tooned with the riot of gloriannas. How quiet they 
seem to me as I think of them now! How emble- 
matic ! Do you know, my dear Parent, that I some- 

[30] 



^v, . 



WHEN GENIUS REMAINED 

times wonder if, after all, it were not better to 
dream, and dream . . . and dream. 

Your affectionate son, 

Bergquist. 

So don't worry about your boy if he writes home 
like that. He may simply have an eye for fame and 
future compilation. 



[31] 



IV 

THE TORTURES OF WEEK-END 
VISITING 

T[E present labor situation shows to what a 
pretty pass things may come because of a 
lack of understanding between the parties involved. 
I bring in the present labor situation just to give 
a touch of timeliness to this thing. Had I been 
writing for the Christmas number, I should have 
begun as follows: "The indiscriminate giving of 
Christmas presents shows to what a pretty pass 
things may come because of a lack of understand- 
ing between the parties involved." 

The idea to be driven home is that things may 
come to a pretty pass by the parties involved in 
an affair of any kind if they do not come to an 
understanding before commencing operations. 

I hope I have made my point clear. Especially 
is this true, (watch out carefully now, as the whole 
nub of the article will be coming along in just a min- 
ute), especially is this true in the relations between 
host and guest on week-end visits. (There, you have 
it! In fact, the title to this whole thing might very 

[32] 



THE TORTURES OF VISITING 

well be, " The Need for a Clearer Definition of Re- 
lations between Host and Guest on Week-end Vis- 
its," and not be at all overstating it, at that.) 

The logic of this will be apparent to any one who 
has ever been a host or a guest at a week-end party, 
a classification embracing practically all Caucasians 
over eleven years of age who can put powder on 
the nose or tie a bow-tie. Who has not wished that 
his host would come out frankly at the beginning of 
the visit and state, in no uncertain terms, the rules 
and preferences of the household in such matters as 
the breakfast hour? And who has not sounded his 
guest to find out what he likes in the regulation of 
his diet and modus vivendi (mode of living) ? Col- 
lective bargaining on the part of labor unions and 
capital makes it possible for employers to know just 
what the workers think on matters of common in- 
terest. Is collective bargaining between host and 
guest so impossible, then? 

Take, for example, the matter of arising in the 
morning. Of course, where there is a large house- 
party the problem is a simple one, for you can al- 
ways hear the others pattering about and brushing 
their teeth. You can regulate your own arising by 
the number of people who seem to be astir. But 
if you are the only guest there is apt to be a fright- 
ful misunderstanding. 

[33] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

" At what time is breakfast? " you ask. 

" Oh, any old time on Sundays," replies the host- 
ess with a generous gesture. " Sleep as late as you 
like. This is ' Liberty Hall.' " 

The sentiment in this attitude is perfectly bully, 
but there is nothing that you can really take hold 
of in it. It satisfies at the time, but in the morning 
there is a vagueness about it that is simply terrify- 
ing. 

Let us say that you awake at eight. You listen 
and hear no one stirring. Then, over on the cool 
pillow again until eight-twenty. Again up on the 
elbow, with head cocked on one side. There is a 
creak in the direction of the stairs. They may all 
be up and going down to breakfast! It is but the 
work of a moment, to bound out of bed and listen 
at the door. Perhaps open it modestly and peer out. 
Deathlike silence, broken only, as the phrase goes, 
by the ticking of the hall clock, and not a soul 
in sight. Probably they are late sleepers. Maybe 
eleven o^clock is their Sunday rising hour. Some 
people are like that. 

Shut the door and sit on the edge of the bed. 
More sleep is out of the question. Let's take a look 
at the pictures in the guest-room, just to pass the 
time. Here's one of Loma Doone. How d'e do, 
Lorna? Here's a group — taken in 1902 — showing 

[34] 



THE TORTURES OF VISITING 

your host in evening clothes, holding a mandolin. 
Probably a member of his college musical-club. 
Rather unkempt looking bunch, you must say. Well, 
how about this one? An etching, showing suspi- 
cious-looking barges on what is probably the 
Thames. Fair enough, at that. 

Back to the door and listen again. Tick-tock-tick- 
tock. Probably, if you started your tub, you'd wake 
the whole house. Let's sit down on the edge of the 
bed again. 

Hello, here are some books on the table. " Fifty 
Famous Sonnets," illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. 
Never touch a sonnet before breakfast. " My ex- 
periences in the Alps," by a woman mountain-climber 
who has written on the fly-leaf, " To my good friends 
the Elbridges, in memory of many happy days to- 
gether at Chamounix. October, 1907." That set- 
tles that.' " Essay on Compensation " in limp leather, 
by R. W. Emerson, published by Houghton, Mifflin 
& Co. Oh, very well! You suppose they thought 
that would be over your head, did they? Well, we'll 
just show them ! We'll read it just for spite. Open- 
ing, to the red ribbon: 

" Of the like nature is that expectation of change 
which instantly follows the suspension of our vol- 
untary activity. The terror of cloudless noon — " 

By the way, it must be nearly noon now! Ten 

[35] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

minutes past nine, only! Well, the only thing to 
do is get dressed and go out and walk about the 
grounds. Eliminate the tub as too noisy. And so, 
very cautiously, almost clandestinely, you proceed 
to dress. 

And now, just to reverse the process. Suppose 
you are the host. You have arisen at eight and lis- 
tened at the guest's door. No sound. Tip-toe back 
and get dressed, talking in whispers to your wife 
(the hostess) and cramming flannel bears into the 
infant's mouth to keep him from disturbing the 
sleeper. 

" Bill looked tired last night. Better let him sleep 
a little longer," you suggest. And so, downstairs on 
your hands and knees, and look over the Sunday 
papers. Then a bracing walk on the porch, re- 
sulting in a terrific appetite. 

A glance at the watch shows nine o'clock. Sun- 
day breakfast is usually at eight-thirty. The warm 
aroma of coffee creeps in from the kitchen and, 
somewhere, some one is baking muffins. This is 
awful! You suppose it feels something like this to 
be caught on an ice-floe without any food and so 
starve to death. Only there you can't smell coffee 
and muffins. You sneak into the dining-room and 
steal one of the property oranges from the side- 
board, but little Edgar sees you and sets up such 

[36] 



THE TORTURES OF VISITING 

a howl that you have to give it to him. The hostess 
suggests that your friend may have the sleeping- 
sickness. Weakened by hunger, you hotly resent 
this, and one word leads to another. 

"Oh, very well, I'll go up and rout him out," 
you snarl. 

Upstairs again, and poise, in listening attitude. 




" * Hello, Bill,' you say flatly." 

just in front of the guest's door. Slowly the door 
opens, inch by inch, and, finally his head is edged 
cautiously out toward yours. 

" Hello, Bill," you say flatly, " what are you get- 
ting up this time of the morning for? Thought 
I told you to sleep late." 

" Morning, Ed," he says, equally flatly, " hope 

[37] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

I haven't kept you all waiting." Then you both lie 
and eat breakfast. 

Such a misunderstanding is apt to go to almost 
any length. I once knew of a man on a week-end 
visit who spent an entire Sunday in his room, listen- 
ing at his door to see if the family were astir, while, 
in the meantime, the family were, one by one, tip- 
toeing to his door to see if they could detect any 
signs of life from him. 

Each thought the other needed rest. 

Along about three in the afternoon the family 
threw all hospitality aside and ate breakfast, dead- 
ening the sound of the cutlery as much as possible, 
little dreaming that their guest was looking through 
the " A Prayer for Each Day " calendar for the 
ninth time and seriously considering letting himself 
down from the window on a sheet and making for 
the next train. Shortly after dark persistent rumors 
got abroad that he had done away with himself, 
and every one went up and sniffed for gas. It was 
only when the maid, who was not in on the secret, 
bolted into the room to turn down his bed for the 
night, that she found him tip-toeing about, packing 
and unpacking his bag and listening eagerly at the 
wall. (Now don't ask how it happened that the 
maid didn't know that his bed hadn't been made 
that morning. What difference does it make, any- 

[38] 



THE TORTURES OF VISITING 

way? It is such questions as thaty that blight any 
attempt at individual writing in this country.) 

Don't think, just because I have taken all this 
space to deal with the rising-hour problem that there 
are no other points to be made. Oh, not at all. 
There is, for instance, the question of exercise. 
After dinner the host says to himself: " Something 
must be done. I wonder if he likes to walk." Aloud, 
he says: " Well, Bill, how about a little hike in the 
country? " 

A hike in the country being the last thing in the 
world that Bill wants, he says, " Right-o! Anything 
you say." And so, although walking is a tremen- 
dous trial to the host, who has weak ankles, he 
bundles up with a great show of heartiness and grabs 
his stick as if this were the one thing he lived for. 

After about a mile of hobbling along the coun- 
try-road the host says, hopefully: " Don't let me 
tire you out, old man. Any time you want to turn 
back, just say the word." 

The guest, thinking longingly of the fireside, scoffs 
at the idea of turning back, insisting that if there is 
one thing in all the world that he likes better than 
walking it is running. So on they jog, hippity-hop, 
hippity-hop, each wishing that it would rain so that 
they could turn about and go home. 

Here again the thing may go to almost tragic 

[39] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

lengths. Suppose neither has the courage to sug- 
gest the return move. They might walk on into 
Canada, or they might become exhausted and have 
to be taken into a roadhouse and eat a " $2 old- 
fashioned Southern dinner of fried chicken and waf- 
fles." The imagination revolts at a further contem- 




"So on they jog. . . . Each wishing that it would rain." 

plation of the possibilities of this lack of cooperation 
between guest and host. 

I once visited a man who had an outdoor swim- 
ming-pool on his estate. (Consider that as very 
casually said.) It was in April, long before Spring 
had really understood what was expected of her. 
My first night there my host said: 

" Are you a morning plunger? " 

[40] 



w 



THE TORTURES OF VISITING 



Thinking that he referred to a tub plunge in a 
warm bathroom, I glowed and said: " You bet." 

" I'll call for you at seven in the morning, then," 
he said, " and we'll go out to the pool." 

It was evidently his morning custom and I wasn't 
going to have it said of me that a middle-aged man 
could outdo me in virility. So, at seven in the morn- 
ing, in a dense fog (with now and then a slash of 
cold rain), we picked our way out to the pool and 
staged a vivid Siberian moving picture scene, show- 
ing naked peasants bathing in the Nevsky. My visit 
lasted five days, and I afterward learned, from one 
to whom my host had confided, that it was the 
worst five days he had ever gone through, and that 
he has chronic joint-trouble as a result of those 
plunges. " But I couldn't be outdone by a mere 
stripling," he said, " and the boy certainly enjoyed 
it." 

All of this might have been avoided by the post- 
ing of a sign in a conspicuous place in my bedroom, 
reading as follows: "Personally, I dislike swim- 
ming in the pool at this time of the year. Guests 
wishing to do so may obtain towels at the desk." 
How very simple and practical! 

The sign system is the only solution I can offer. 
It is crude and brutal, but it admits of no mis- 
understanding. A sign in each guest-room, giving 

[41] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS I 

the hours of meals, political and religious preferences 
of the family, general views on exercise, etc., etc., 
with a blank for the guest to fill out, stating his own 
views on these subjects, would make it possible to 
visit (or entertain) with a sense of security thus 
far unknown upon our planet. 



[42] 






GARDENING NOTES 

DURING the past month almost every paper, 
with the exception of the agricultural jour- 
nals, has installed an agricultural department, con- 
taining short articles by Lord Northcliffe, or some 
one else in the office who had an unoccupied t3^e- 
writer, telling the American citizen how to start 
and hold the interest of a small garden. The seed 
catalogue has become the catechism of the patriot, 
and, if you don't like to read the brusk, prosy di- 
rections on planting as given there, you may find the 
same thing done in verse in your favorite poetry 
magazine, or a special department in The Plumbing 
Age under the heading "The Plumber's Garden: 
How and When to Plant." 

But all of these editorial suggestions appear to be 
conducted by professionals for the benefit of the 
la5m[ian, which seems to me to be a rather one-sided 
way of going about the thing. Obviously the sug- 
gestions should come from a layman himself, in the 
nature of warnings to others. 

I am qualified to put forth such an article be- 

[43] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 

cause of two weeks' service in my own back yard, 
doing my bit for Peter Henderson and planting 
all sorts of things in the ground without the slight- 
est expectation of ever seeing anything of any of 
them again. If, by any chance, a sprout should 
show itself, unmistakably the result of one of my 
plantings, I would be willing to be quoted as saying 
that Nature is wonderful. In fact, I would take it 
as a personal favor, and would feel that anything 
that I might do in the future for Nature would be 
little enough in return for the special work she went 
to all the trouble of doing for me. But all of this 
is on condition that something of mine grows into 
manhood. Otherwise, Nature can go her way and 
I'll go mine, just as we have gone up till now. 

However, although I am an amateur, I shall have 
to adopt, in my writing, the tone of a professional, 
or I shall never get any one to believe what I say. 
If, therefore, from now on I sound a bit cold and 
unfriendly, you will realize that a professional agri- 
cultural writer has to have some dignity about his 
stuff, and that beneath my rough exterior I am a 
pleasant enough sort of person to meet socially. 

Preparing the Ground for the Garden 

This is one of the most important things that 
the young gardener is called upon to do. In fact, 

[44] 



GARDENING NOTES 

a great many young gardeners never do anything 
further. Some inherited weakness, something they 
never realized they had before, may crop out dur- 
ing this process: weak back, tendency of shoulder- 




"If you are able to walk as far as the bathtub . . . 



blades to ossification, misplacement of several im- 
portant vertebrae, all are apt to be discovered for 
the first time during the course of one day's dig- 
ging. If, on the morning following the first attempt 
to prepare the ground for planting, you are able to 
walk in a semi-erect position as far as the bath-tub 
(and, without outside assistance, lift one foot into 
the water), you may flatter yourself that you are, 

[45] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

joint for joint, in as perfect condition as the man 
in the rubber-heels advertisements. 

Authorities differ as to the best way of digging. 
All agree that it is impossible to avoid walking 
about during the following week as if you were 
impersonating an old colored waiter with the limi- 
bago; but there are two schools, each with its own 
theory, as to the less painful method. One advocates 
bending over, without once raising up, imtil the 
whole row is dug. The others, of whom I must con- 
fess that I am one, feel that it is better to draw 
the body to a more or less erect position after each 
shovelful. In support of this contention, Greitz, 
the well-known authority on the muscles of the back, 
says on page 233 of his " Untersuchungen iiber Sitt- 
lichkeitsdelikte und Gesellschaftsbiologie ": 

" The constant tightening and relaxing of the 
latissimus dorsi effected in raising the body as the 
earth is tossed aside, has a tendency to relieve the 
strain by distributing it equally among the serratus 
posticus inferior and the corner of Thirty-fourth 
Street." He then goes on to say practically what 
I have said above. 

The necessity for work of such a strenuous 
nature in the mere preliminaries of the process of 
planting a garden is due to the fact that the aver- 
age back-yard has, up till the present time, been 

[46] 



GARDENING NOTES 

behaving less like a garden than an)^ing else in 
the world. You might think that a back-yard, pos- 
sessed of an ordinary amount of decency and civic- 
pride would, at some time during its career, have 
said to itself: 

"Now look here! I may some day be called 
upon to be a garden, and the least I can do is to 
get myself into some sort of shape, so that, when 
the time comes, I will be fairly ready to receive a 
seed or two." 

But no! Year in and year out they have been 
drifting along in a fools' paradise, accumulating 
stones and queer, indistinguishable cans and things, 
until they were prepared to become anything, quar- 
ries, iron-mines, notion-counters, — anything but gar- 
dens. 

I have saved in a box all the things that I have 
dug from my back-yard, and, when I have them 
assembled, all I will need will be a good engine to 
make them into a pretty fairly decent runabout, — 
nothing elaborate, mind you, but good enough to run 
the family out in on Sunday afternoons. 

And then there are lots of other things that 
wouldn't even fit into the runabout. Queer-looking 
objects, they are; things that perhaps in their hey- 
dey were rather stunning, but which have now as- 
sumed an air of indifference, as if to say, " Oh, call 

[47] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

me anything, old fellow, Ice-pick, Mainspring, 
Cigar-lighter, anything, I don't care." I tell you, 
it's enough to make a man stop and think. But 
there, I mustn't get sentimental. 

In preparing the soil for planting, you will need 
several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing 
to use, but it would have a tendency to get the 
dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs. This 
not being practicable, there is no other way but 
for you to get at it with a fork (oh, don' be silly), 
a spade, and a rake. If you have an empty and 
detached furnace boiler, you might bring that along 
to fill with the stones you will dig up. If it is a 
small garden, you ought not to have to empty the 
boiler more than three or four times. Any neigh- 
bor who is building a stone house will be glad to 
contract with you for the stones, and those that 
are left over after he has got his house built can 
be sold to another neighbor who is building an- 
other stone house. Your market is limited only 
by the number of neighbors who are building stone 
houses. 

On the first day, when you find yourself con- 
fronted by a stretch of untouched ground which is 
to be turned over (technical phrase, meaning to 
"turn over"), you may be somewhat at a loss to 
know where to begin. Such indecision is only natu- 

[48] 



GARDENING NOTES 

ral, and should cause no worry on the part of the 
young gardener. It is something we all have to go 
through with. You may feel that it would be futile 
and unsystematic to go about digging up a forkful 
here and a shovelful there, tossing the earth at 
random, in the hope that in due time you will get 
the place dug up. And so it would. 

The thing to do is to decide just where you want 
your garden, and what its dimensions are to be. 
This will have necessitated a previous drawing up 
of a chart, showing just what is to be planted and 
where. As this chart will be the cause of con- 
siderable hard feeling in the family circle, usually 
precipitating a fist-fight over the number of rows 
of onions to be set out, I will not touch on that 
in this article. There are some things too intimate 
for even a professional agriculturist to write of. I 
will say, however, that those in the family who are 
standing out for onions might much better save 
their time and feelings by pretending to give in, 
and then, later in the day, sneaking out and slip- 
ping the sprouts in by themselves in some spot 
where they will know where to find them again. 

Having decided on the general plan and dimen- 
sions of the plot, gather the family about as if for 
a corner-stone dedication, and then make a rather 
impressive ceremony of driving in the first stake by 

[49] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

getting your little boy to sing the first twelve words 
of some patriotic air. (If he doesn't know the first 
twelve, any twelve will do. The idea is to keep the 
music going during the driving of the stake.) 




Make a rather impressive ceremony of driving the first stake." 



The stake is to be driven at an imaginary comer 
of what is to be your garden, and a string stretched 
to another stake at another imaginary corner, and 
there you have a line along which to dig. This 
will be a big comfort. You will feel that at last 
you have something tangible. Now all that remains 
is to turn the ground over, harrow it, smooth it up 

[50] 



p 

GARDENING NOTES 

nice and neat, plant your seeds, cultivate them, thin 
out your plants and pick the crops. 

It may seem that I have spent most of my time 
in advice on preparing the ground for planting. 
Such may well be the case, as that was as far 
as I got. I then found a man who likes to do 
those things and whose doctor has told him that 
he ought to be out of doors all the time. He is an 
Italian, and charges really very little when you 
consider what he accomplishes. Any further advice 
on starting and keeping up a garden, I shall have 
to get him to write for you. 



tsi] 



VI 

LESSON NUMBER ONE 

FRANKLY, I am not much of a hand at ma- 
chinery of any sort. I have no prejudice 
against it as such, for some of my best friends are 
of a mechanical turn of mind, and very nice fel- 
lows they are too. But the pencil sharpener in our 
office is about as far as I, personally, have ever got 
in the line of operating a complicated piece of mech- 
anism with any degree of success. 

So, when George suggested that he teach me to 
run his car, it seemed a reasonable proposition. Ob- 
viously, some one had to teach me. I couldn't be 
expected to go out and pick the thing up by myself, 
like learning to eat olives. No matter how well- 
intentioned I might be, or how long I stuck at it, 
the chances are that I never could learn to drive 
a car simply by sitting in the seat alone and fool- 
ing around among the gadgets until I found the 
right ones. Something would be sure to happen 
to spoil the whole thing long before I got the hang 
of it. 

[52] 



^ 



LESSON NUMBER ONE 

The car was, therefore, brought out into the 
driveway at the side of the house, like a bull be- 
ing led into the ring for a humid afternoon with the 
matador. It was right here that George began to 
show his true colors, for he stopped the engine, 
which was running very nicely as it was, and said 
that I might as well begin by learning to crank 
it, as I probably would spend seven-eighths of my 
driving time cranking in the future. 

I didn't like this in George. It showed that he 
wasn't going about it in the right spirit. He was 
beginning with the assumption that I would make 
a dub of myself, and, as I was already beginning 
to assume the same thing, it looked rather black 
for the lesson, with both parties to it holding the 
same pessimistic thought. 

So, right off the bat, I said: 

" No, George. It seems to me that you ought to 
crank it yourself. To-day I am learning to drive 
the car. * One thing at a time ' is my motto. That 
is what has brought our modern industrial system 
to its present state of efficiency: the Division of 
Labor — one man who does nothing but make holes 
in washers, another who does nothing but slip the 
washers over the dinguses over which they belong; 
one man who devotes his whole time to running 
a car, another who specializes in cranking it. Now, 

[S3] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 



in the early days of industry, when the guild was 
the unit of organization among the workers — " 

George, having cranked the engine, motioned me 
into the driver's seat, and took his position beside 
me. It struck me that the thing was very poorly 
arranged, in that the place which was to be occu- 
pied by the driver, obviously the most important 
person in the car (except, of course, the lady member 
of the party in the tonneau, who holds the bluebook 
and gives wrong directions as to turnings), was all 
cluttered up with a lot of apparatus and pedals and 
things, so much so that I had to inhale and contract 
in order to squeeze past the wheel into my seat. 
And even then I was forced to stretch one leg out 
so far that I kicked a little gadget on a box ar- 
rangement on the dashboard, which apparently 
stopped the engine. As he cranked it again, George 
said, among other things, that it couldn't possibly 
have been done except on purpose, and that he 
could take a joke as well as the next man, but 
that, good night, what was the use of being an 
ass? 

As if I, with no mechanical instinct whatever, 
knew what was in that box! I don't know even now, 
and I have got my driver's license. 

George finally got things stirring again and 
climbed in, leaving the door partly open — ^no doubt 

[54] 



p 



LESSON NUMBER ONE 



in order that, in case of emergency, he could walk, 
not run, to the street via the nearest exit. 

"The gear set of this car is of the planetary 
type," he said, by way of opening the seminar, while 
the motor behaved as if it were trying to jiggle 




"George said that he could take a joke, but that, good night i 
what was the use of being an ass ? " 



its way out from under the cushions and bite me. 
" This planetary system gives two forward speeds 
and a reverse motion." 

" Nothing could be fairer than that. It sounds 
like an almost perfect arrangement to me," I said, 
to show that I was listening. And then, to show 
that I was thinking about the thing as well, I asked: 
" But surely you don't have to pedal the thing along 

[55] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

yourself by foot power! All those pedals down 
there would seem to leave very little for the gaso- 
line power to do." 

" Those three pedals are what do the trick," ex- 
plained George. And then he added ominously: " If 
you should step on that left-hand one now, you 
would throw in your clutch." 

" Please, George, don't get morbid," I protested. 
" I'm nervous enough as it is, without having to 
worry about my own bodily safety." 

" The middle pedal, marked ^ R,' is the reverse, 
and the one at the right, marked ^ B,' is the foot 
brake. Now, when you want to start — " 

" Just a minute, please," I said sternly. " You 
skip over those as if there were something about 
them you were a little ashamed of, George. Are 
you keeping something from me about the reverse 
and the foot brake? " 

" I didn't know but that somewhere in your valu- 
able college course they taught you what ^ reverse ' 
meant, and I was sure that your little son had told 
you all about the foot brake on his express wagon," 
saiS George, waxing sarcastic in the manner of the 
technical man that he is. 

" I don't want you to take anything for granted 
in teaching me to run this thing," I replied. " It 
is those little things that count, you know, and I 

[56] 



r 



LESSON NUMBER ONE 

would feel just as badly as you would if I were to 
run your car over a cliff into a rocky gorge be- 
cause of some detail that I was uninformed about. 
You know that, George." 

" Very well," he said, " I'll get down to funda- 
mentals. When you push the reverse pedal, you 
drive the car in the opposite direction from that 
in which it is headed. This is done by tightening 
the external contracting clutch bands which are 
between the gearing and the disk clutch." 

Somehow this struck me as funny. The idea of 
reversing by tightening any bands at all, much less 
external contracting ones, was the one thing needed 
to send me off into roars of laughter. The whole 
thing seemed so flat, after the excitement of the 
war, and everything. 

Naturally George didn't get it. It was Vay over 
his head, and I knew that there would be no use 
trying to explain it to him. So I just continued to 
chuckle and murmur: " External contracting clutch 
bands! You'll be the death of me yet, George! " 

But I felt that, as the minutes went by, the situ- 
ation was getting strained. My instructor and I 
were growing farther and farther apart in spirit, 
and, after all, it was his car and he was going to 
considerable trouble to teach me to run it, and the 
least that I could do would be to take him seriously, 

[57] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

whether the thing struck me as being sensible or not. 

So I calmed myself with some effort, and tried 
to bring the conversation around to an opening for 
him to begin with further explanations. 

" But, all joking aside, George, how can you be 
so sure about these things? You say that when you 
push the reverse pedal you tighten the external con- 
tracting clutch bands. Did you ever see them 
tighten? Or are you taking some one's word for it? 
Remember how the German people were deceived 
for years by their rulers! Now supposing — just 
supposing — that it had been to some unscrupulous 
person's advantage to make you think that the — " 

" Now, listen. Bob," said George (my name is 
Bob, and I see no reason why, simply because I am 
writing a piece about myself, I should make be- 
lieve that my name is Stuart or Will, especially 
as it is right there in black and white at the head 
of the story. This assuming new names on the part 
of authors is a literary affectation which ought to 
be done away with once and for all). " Now, listen, 
Bob," said George, very quietly and very distinctly, 
" the only thing for you to do if you are going to 
learn to run this thing, is to get right down to brass 
tacks and run it, and the sooner you try it, the 
better." 

" Oh, you practical guys! " I said. " Nothing will 

[58] 



LESSON NUMBER ONE 

do but you must always be getting down to brass 
tacks. It's men like you who are driving all the 
poetry out of the world." 

" You flatter me," said George, reaching bruskly 
across me as if he were after the salt and pepper, 
and adjusting a couple of dingbats on the steering 
wheel. " This here is the spark, and this is the 
throttle. The throttle governs the gas supply, and 
the spark regulates the — eh, well, it regulates the 
spark." 

" What won't these scientists think up next? " I 
marveled. " It's uncanny, that's what it is — un- 
canny." 

^^ Now, then: hold your foot on the clutch pedal 
and keep her in neutral, while you shove your hand 
lever forward as far as it will go. That's right! . . . 
That's fine . . . 'way forward . . . now . . . that's 
right . . . that's fine! " 

I was so encouraged by the way things seemed 
to be going that I took all my feet away from all 
the things they were stepping on, and sighed: 

" Let's rest a minute, old man. I'm all of a 
tremble. It's much easier than I thought, but I'd 
rather take it stage by stage than to dash right 
off the first thing." 

The trouble seemed to be that, in lifting my feet, 
I had discouraged the motor, which sighed and 

[59] 



^ 



OF ALL THINGS! 

stopped functioning, giving the car a playful shake, 
like an Erie local stopping at Babbitt (N. J.) on 
signal. So George said that, in the future, no mat- 
ter how well things seemed to be going, never to 
give in to my emotions again, but keep right on 
working, even though it looked as if I were in dan- 
ger of becoming an expert driver in three minutes. 
There is always something to learn, he said. Then 
he got out and cranked the engine. 

We went through the same process again, only 
I kept my foot on the vox humana pedal until I 
had crammed it 'way into fortissimo. Then sud- 
denly a wonderful thing happened. The whole 
thing — car, engine, George, and I — began to move, 
all together. It was a big moment in my life. I 
could see the headlines in the evening papers: 

Young Scribe Overcomes Natural Laws 
Causes Auto to Move by Pushing Pedal 

But this elation was for only a moment. For, 
while we had been arguing, some one had sneaked 
up in front of us and transplanted the hydrangea 
bush from the lawn at our side to the very middle 
of the driveway, a silly place for a hydrangea bush 
at best, but an absolutely fatal one at the moment 
when an automobile was being driven through the 
yard. 

[60] 






i^.:- 



LESSON NUMBER ONE 

It was but the work of a second for me to sense 
the danger. It was but the work of half a second, 
however, for us to be rustling our way slowly and 
lumberingly into the luxuriant foliage of the bush. 
So I was just about half a second late, which I do 
not consider bad for a beginner. 

" Put on your brake! " shouted George. 

Quick as a wink (one of those long sensuous 
winks) I figured out which the brake was, by find- 
ing the symbolical " B " on the pedal. Like a 
trained mechanician I stepped on it. 

*' Release your clutch first, you poor fishl " 
screamed George, above the horrible grinding noise. 
" Release your clutch ! " 

This was more than flesh and blood could bear. 
Again I relieved my feet from any responsibility in 
the affair, and turned to my instructor. 

" Don't shout so ! " I yelled back at him. " And 
don't keep calling it my clutch! It may be because 
I was brought up in a Puritan family, but the whole 
subject of clutches is a closed book to me. If it 
is something I should know about, you can tell 
me when we get in the house. But, for the pres- 
ent, let's drop the matter. At any rate, I stopped 
your darn car, clutch, or no clutch." 

And so I had. There we were, in the middle of 
the hydrangea bush, very quiet and peaceful, like 

[6i] 



n 



OF ALL THINGS! 

a couple of birds in a bird house atop of rustling 
oak (or maple, for that matter). Even the engine 
had stopped. 

I reached out and plucked a blossom that was 
peeking over the dashboard where the whip socket 
should have been. After all, there is no place like 
the country. I said so to George, and he tacitly 
agreed. At least, I took it to be agreement. It was 
certainly tacit. I was afraid that he was a little 
hurt over what I had said about the clutch, and 
so I decided that it might be best not to mention 
the subject a*gain. In fact, it seemed wiser to get 
away from the topic of automobiles entirely. So I 
said softly: 

" George, did it ever occur to you how the war 
has changed our daily life? Not only have we 
had to alter our methods of provisioning our ta- 
bles and feeding our families, but we have ac- 
quired a certain detachment of mind, a certain new 
sufficiency of spirit." 

(We had both alighted from the car and had 
placed ourselves, one on each side, to roll it out 
of the embraces of the hydrangea bush.) 

" I have been reading a book during the past 
week on Problems of Reconstruction," I continued, 
" and I have been impressed by the thought which 

[62] 






LESSON NUMBER ONE 












.' '-''1^ 









»y^- ^l,^„. 



"After all, there is no place like the country. I said so to 
George, and he tacitly agreed.'* 



[63] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

is being given to the development of the waste lands 
in the West." 

(We had, by this time, got the car rolled out 
into the driveway again.) 

"The problem of the children, too, is an ab- 
sorbing one for the years which lie ahead of us. 
We cannot go back to the old methods of child 
training, any more than we can go back to the 
old methods of diplomacy. The war has created 
a hiatus. That which follows will depend on the 
zeal with which America applies herself to her task 
of rehabilitation." 

(The machine was now moored in her parking 
space by the porte-cochere, and the brakes applied.) 

" It seems to me that we are living in a great 
period of transition; doesn't it look that way to 
you, George? " 

"Yes," said George. 

And so we went into the house. 



[64] 



vn 

THOUGHTS ON FUEL SAVING 

CONSIDERABLE space has been given in the 
magazines and newspapers this winter to of- 
ficial and expert directions on How to Run Your 
Furnace and Save Coal — as if the two things were 
compatible. Some had accompanying diagrams of 
a furnace in its normal state, showing the exact 
position of the arteries and vitals, with arrows point- 
ing in interesting directions, indicating the theoreti- 
cal course of the heat. 

I have given some time to studying these charts, 
and have come to the conclusion that when the au- 
thors of such articles and I speak the word " fur- 
nace," we mean entirely different things. They are 
referring to some ideahzed, sublimated creation; per- 
haps the " furnace " which existed originally in the 
mind of Horace W. Furnace^ the inventor; while, 
on the other hand, I am referring to the thing that 
is in my cellar. No wonder that I can't understand 
their diagrams. 

For my own satisfaction, therefore, I have drawn 
up a few regulations which I can understand, and 

[65] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 



have thrown them together most informally for 
whatever they may be worth. Any one else who 
has checked up the official furnace instructions with 
Life as it really is and has found something wrong 
somewhere may go as far as he likes with the re- 
sults of my researches. I give them to the world. 

Saving coal is, just now, the chief concern of most 
householders, for we are now entering that por- 
tion of the solstice when it is beginning to be neces- 
sary to walk some distance into the bin after the 
coal. When first the list of official admonitions 
were issued, early in the season, it was hard 
to believe that they ever would be needed. The 
bin was so full that it resembled a drug-store win- 
dow piled high with salted peanuts. (As a matter 
of actual fact, there is probably nothing that coal 
looks less like than salted peanuts, but the effect of 
tremendous quantity was the same.) Adventurous 
pieces were fairly popping out of confinement and 
rolling over the cellar. It seemed as if there were 
enough coal there to give the Leviathan a good run 
for her money and perhaps take her out as far as 
Bedloe Island. A fig for coal-saving devices! 

But now the season is well on, and the bad news 
is only too apparent. The householder, as he finds 
himself walking farther and farther into the bin 
after the next shovelful, realizes that soon will come 

[66] 



THOUGHTS ON FUEL SAVING 

the time when it will be necessary to scrape the 
leavings into a corner, up against the side of the bin, 
and to coal his fire, piece by piece, between his finger 
and thumb, while waiting for the dealer to deliver 
that next load, "right away, probably to-day, to- 
morrow at the latest." 

It is therefore essential that we turn constructive 
thought to the subject of coal conservation. I would 
suggest, in the first place, an exact aim in shovel- 
ing coal into the fire box. 

By this I mean the cultivation of an exact aim in 
shoveling coal into the fire box. In my own case (if 
I may be permitted to inject the personal element 
into this article for one second), I know that it 
often happens that, when I have a large shovelful of 
coal in readiness for the fire, and the door to the 
fire box open as wide as it will go, there may be, 
nevertheless, the variation of perhaps an eighth 
of an inch between the point where the shovel 
should have ended the arc in its forward swing and 
the point at which it actually stops. In less tech- 
nical phraseology, I sometimes tick the edge of the 
shovel against the threshold of the fire box, in- 
stead of shooting it over as should be done. Now, 
as I usually take a rather long, low swing, with 
considerable power behind it (if I do say so), the 
sudden contact of the shovel with the threshold re- 

[67] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

suits in a forceful projection of the many pieces 
of coal (and whatever else it is that comes with the 
coal for good measure) into all corners of the cel- 
lar. I have seen coal fly from my shovel under 




In less technicaf language, I sometimes tick the edge of the 
shovel against the threshold of the fire box." 



such circumstances with such velocity as to land 
among the preserves at the other end of the cellar 
and in the opposite direction from which I was 
facing. 

Now, this is obviously a waste of coal. It would 
be impossible to stoop all about the cellar pick- 
ing up the vagrant pieces that had flown away, 
even if the blow of the shovel against the furnace 

[68] 



THOUGHTS ON FUEL SAVING 

had not temporarily paralyzed your hand and caused 
you to devote your entire attention to the coining 
of new and descriptive word pictures. 

I would suggest, for this trouble, the taking of a 
" stance " in front of the fire box, with perhaps chalk 
markings for guidance of the feet at just the right 
distance away. Then a series of preparatory swings, 
as in driving off in golf, first with the empty shovel, 
then with a gradually increasing amount of coal. 
The only danger in this would be that you might 
bring the handle of the shovel back against an ash 
can or something behind you and thus spill about 
as much coal as before. But there, there — if you 
are going to borrow trouble like that, you might as 
well give up right now. 

Another mishap of a somewhat similar nature 
occurs when a shovelful of ashes from under the 
grate is hit against the projecting shaker, causing 
the ashes to scatter over the floor and the shoes. 
This is a very discouraging thing to have happen, 
for, as the ashes are quite apt to contain at least 
three or four pieces of unburnt coal, it means that 
those pieces are as good as lost unless you have 
time to hunt them up. It also means shining the 
shoes again. 

I find that an efficacious preventive for this is to 
take the shaker off when it is not in use and stand 

[69] 



OF ALL THINGS ^ 



1 



it in the corner. There the worst thing that it can 
do is to fall over against your shins when you are 
rummaging around for the furnace-bath-brush 
among the rest of the truck that hangs on the 
wall. 

And, by the way, there are at least two pieces of 
long-handled equipment hanging on my cellar wall 
(items in the estate of the former tenant, who must 
have been a fancier of some sort) whose use I have 
never been able to figure out. I have tried them on 
various parts of the furnace at one time or another, 
but, as there is not much of anything that one on 
the outside of a furnace can do but poke, it seems 
rather silly to have half a dozen niblick-pokers and 
midiron-pokers with which to do it. One of these, 
resembling in shape a bridge, such as is used on all 
occasions by novices at pool, I experimented with 
one night and got it so tightly caught in back of 
the grate somewhere that I had to let the fire go out 
and take the dead coals out, piece by piece, through 
the door in order to get at the captive instrument 
and release it. And, of course, all this experimenting 
wasted coal. 

The shaker is, however, an important factor in 
keeping the furnace going, for it is practically the 
only recourse in dislodging clinkers which have be- 
come stuck in the grate — that is, unless you can kick 

[70] 



THOUGHTS ON FUEL SAVING 

the furnace hard enough to shake them down. I 
have, in moments when, I am afraid, I was not 
quite myself, kicked the furnace with considerable 
force, but I never could see that it had any effect 
on the clinker. This, however, is no sign that it 
can't be done. I would be the first one to wish 
a man well who did it. 

But, ordinarily, the shaker is the accepted agent 
for teaching the clinker its place. And, in the fancy 
assorted coal in vogue this season (one-third coal, 
one- third slate, and one-third rock candy) clinkers 
are running the combustible matter a slightly bet- 
ter than even race. This problem is, therefore, one 
which must be faced. 

I find that a great deal of satisfaction, if not tan- 
gible results, can be derived from personifying the 
furnace and the recalcitrant clinker, and endowing 
them with human attributes, such as fear, chagrin, 
and susceptibility to physical and mental pain. In 
this fanciful manner the thing can be talked to as 
if it were a person, in this way lending a zest to 
the proceedings which would be entirely lacking in 
a contest with an inanimate object. 

Thus, when it is discovered that the grate is 
stuck, you can say, sotto voce: 

" Ho, ho! you *********? Sq that's your 
game, is it? " 

[71] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

(I would not attempt to dictate the particular 
epithets. Each man knows so much better than 
any one else just what gives him the most com- 
fort in this respect that it would be presumptuous 
to lay down any formula. Personally, I have a 
wonderful set of remarks and proper names which 
I picked up one summer from a lobster man in 
Maine, which for soul-satisfying blasphemy are ab- 
solutely unbeatable. I will be glad to furnish this 
set to any one sending a stamped, self-addressed 
envelope.) 

You then seize the shaker with both hands and 
give it a vicious yank, muttering between your 
teeth: 

"We'll see, my fine fellow! We'll see! " 

This is usually very effective in weakening the 
morale of the clinker, for it then realizes right at 
the start that it is pitted against a man who is not 
4 to be trifled with. 

This should be followed by several short and 
powerful yanks, punctuated on the catch of each 
stroke with a muttered: " You ******5jc**j» 

If you are short of wind, the force of this ejacu- 
lation may diminish as the yanks increase in num- 
ber, in which case it will be well to rest for a few 
seconds. 

At this point a little strategy may be brought 

[72] 



THOUGHTS ON FUEL SAVING 

to bear. You can turn away, as if you were de- 
feated, perhaps saying loudly, so that the clinker 
can hear: "Ho-hum! Well, I guess I'll call it a 
day," and pretend to start upstairs. 

Then, quick as a wink, you should turn and leap 
back at the shaker, and, before the thing can re- 
cover from its surprise, give it a yank which will 




tefT. 



" Quick as a wink you should turn and leap back at the shaker." 



either rip it from its moorings or cause your own 
vertebrse to change places with a sharp click. It is 
a fifty-fifty chance. 

But great caution should be observed before try- 
ing these heroic measures to make sure that the pins 
which hold the shaker in place are secure. A loos- 

[73] 



m 



OF ALL THINGS! 



ened pin will stand just so much shaking, and then 
it will unostentatiously work its way out and look 
around for something else to do. This always causes 
an awkward situation, for the yank next following 
the walkout of the pin, far from accomplishing its 
purpose of dispossessing the clinker, will precipi- 
tate you over backward among the ash cans with a 
viciousness in which it is impossible not to detect 
something personal. 

Immediately following such a little upset to one's 
plans, it is perhaps the natural impulse to arise in 
somewhat of a pet and to set about exacting pimi- 
tive indemnities. This does not pay in the end. 
If you hit any exposed portion of the furnace with 
the shaker the chances are that you will break 
it, which, while undoubtedly very painful to the 
furnace at the time, would eventually necessitate 
costly repairs. And, if you throw coal at it, you 
waste coal. This, if you remember, is an article on 
how to save coal. 

Another helpful point is to prevent the fire from 
going out. This may be accomplished in one way 
that I am sure of. That is, by taking a book, or 
a ouija board, or some other indoor entertainment 
downstairs and sitting two feet away from the fur- 
nace all day, being relieved by your wife at night 
(or, needless to say, vice versa). I have never 

[74] 



THOUGHTS ON FUEL SAVING 

known this method of keeping the fire alive to 
fail, except when the watcher dropped off to sleep 
for ten or fifteen minutes. This is plenty of time 
for a raging fire to pass quietly away, and I can 
prove it. 

Of course this treatment cuts in on your social 
life, but I know of nothing else that is infallible. 
I know of nothing else that can render impossi- 
ble that depressing foreboding given expression by 
your wife when she says: " Have you looked at the 
fire lately? It's getting chilly here," followed by 
the apprehensive trip downstairs, eagerly listening 
for some signs of caloric life from within the 
asbestos-covered tomb; the fearful pause before 
opening the door, hoping against hope that the next 
move will disclose a ruddy glow which can easily be 
nursed back to health, but feeling, in the intuitive 
depths of your soul, that you might just as well 
begin crumpling up last Sunday's paper to ignite, 
for the Grim Reaper has passed this way. 

And then the cautious pull at the door, opening 
it inch by inch, until the bitter truth is disclosed — 
a yawning cavern of blackness with the dull, gray 
outlines of consumed coals in the foreground, a dis- 
mal double-play: ashes to ashes. 

These little thoughts on furnace tending and coal 
conservation are not meant to be taken as in any 

[75] 



OF ALL THINGS ! 

sense final. Some one else may have found the 
exact converse to be true; in which case he would 
do well to make a scientific account of it as I have 
done. It helps to buy coal. 



[76] 



VIII 
NOT ACCORDING TO HOYLE 

I HAVE just finished reading an article by an ex- 
pert in auction bridge, and it has left me in a 
cold sweat. As near as I can make out, it presup- 
poses that every one who plays bridge knows what 
he is doing before he does it, which simply means 
that I have been going along all this time working 
on exactly the wrong theory. It may incidentally 
explain why I have never been voted the most 
popular bridge player in Wimblehurst or presented 
with a loving cup by admiring members of the 
Neighborhood Club. 

Diametrically opposed to the system of " think- 
before-you-play," advocated by this expert, my game 
has been built up purely on intuition. I rely almost 
entirely on the inner promptings of the moment in 
playing a card. I don't claim that there is anything 
spiritualistic about it, for it does not work out with 
consistent enough success to be in any way uncanny. 
As a matter of fact, it causes me a lot of trouble. 
When one relies on instinct to remind one of what 
the trumps are, or how many of them have been 

[77] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

played, there is bound to be a slip-up every so often. 

But what chagrins me, after reading the expert's 
article, is the thought that all this while I may have 
been playing with people who were actually thinking 
the thing out beforehand in a sordid sort of way, 
counting the trumps played and figuring on who had 
the queen or where the ten-spot lay. I didn't think 
there were such people in the world. 

Here I have been going ahead, in an honest, 
hail-fellow-well-met mood, sometimes following suit, 
sometimes trumping my partner's trick, always tak- 
ing it for granted that the idea was to get the hand 
played as quickly as possible in order to talk it over 
and tell each other how it might have been done 
differently. 

It is true that, now and again, I have noticed 
sharp looks directed at me by my various partners, 
but I have usually attributed them to a little man- 
nerism I have of humming softly while playing, and 
I have always stopped humming whenever my part- 
ner showed signs of displeasure, being perfectly 
willing to meet any one halfway in an effort to 
make the evening a pleasant one for all concerned. 
But now I am afraid that perhaps the humming 
was only a minor offense. I am appalled at the 
thought of what really was the trouble. 

I should never have allowed myself to be dragged 

[78] 



NOT ACCORDING TO HOYLE 

into it at all. My first big mistake was made when, 
in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the 
game; for a man who can frankly say " I do not 
play bridge" is allowed to go over in the corner 




"Attributed them to a little man- 
nerism I have of humming softly 
while playing." 

and run the pianola by himself, while the poor 
neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that 
he isn't " at all a good player, in fact, I'm perfectly 
rotten," is never believed, but dragged into a game 
where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the 
truth. 

[79] 



OF ALL THINGS 1 

But it was a family affair at first. Dora belonged 
to a whist club which met every Friday afternoon 
on strictly partizan lines, except for once a year, 
when they asked the men in. My experience with 
this organization had been necessarily limited, as 
it held its sessions during my working hours. Once 
in a while, however, I would get home in time to 
meet in the front hall the stragglers who were just 
leaving, amid a general searching for furs and over- 
shoes, and for some unaccountable reason I usu- 
ally felt very foolish on such occasions. Certainly 
I had a right, under the Common Law, to be com- 
ing in my own front door, but I always had a sneak- 
ing feeling, there in the midst of the departing guests, 
that the laugh was on me. 

One Friday, when I was confined to my room with 
a touch of neuralgia (it was in my face, if you are 
interested, and the whole right side swelled up until 
it was twice its normal size — I'd like to tell you more 
about it some time), I could hear the sounds of 
carnival going on downstairs. The noises made by 
women playing bridge are distinctive. At first the 
listener is aware of a sort of preliminary conversa- 
tional murmur, with a running accompaniment of 
shuffling pasteboards. Then follows an unnatural 
quiet, punctuated by the thud of jeweled knuckles 
or the clank of bracelets as the cards are played 

[80] 



NOT ACCORDING TO HOYLE 

against the baize, with now and then little squeals 
of dismay or delight from some of the more demon- 
strative and an occasional '' Good for you, partner! " 
from an appreciative dummy. Gradually, as the 
hand draws toward its close, there begins a low 
sound, like the murmurings of the stage mob in 
the wings, which rapidly increases, until the room 
is filled with a shrill chatter, resembling that in the 
Bird House in Central Park, from which there is 
distinguishable merely a wild medley: 

" If you had led me your queen — ^was so afraid 
she might trump in with — my dear, I didn't have a 
face card in my — threw away just the wrong — ^had 
the jack, lo, 9, and 7 — thought Alice had the 
king — ace and three little ones — how about honors? 
— my dear, simply frightful — if you had returned my 
lead — my dear! " 

This listening in at bridge, however, was the near- 
est I had ever been to the front, until it came time 
for the Friday Afternoon Club to let down the bars 
and have a Men's Night. I had no illusions about 
this " Men's Night," but it was a case of my learn- 
ing to play bridge and accompanying Dora, or of 
her getting some man in from off the sidewalk to 
take my place, and I figured that it would cause less 
talk if I were there to play myself. As I think it 
over now, I feel that the strange-man scheme might 

[81] 



n 



OF ALL THINGS! 

have worked out with less comment being made than 
my playing drew down. 

But it was for this purpose that I allowed myself 
to be instructed in the rudiments of bridge. I had 
nothing permanent in mind in absorbing these prin- 
ciples, fully expecting to forget them again the day 
after the party. I miscalculated by about one day, 
it now seems. 

The expert, whose article has been such an in- 
spiration to me, had some neat little diagrams drawn 
for him, showing just where the cards lay in the 
four hands, and with the players indicated as A, 
B, Y, and Z; apparently the same people, come up 
in the world, who, in our algebras some years ago, 
used to buy and sell apples to each other with fev- 
erish commercialism and to run races with all sorts 
of unfair handicaps. What a small world it is, 
after all! 

It seems to me, therefore, that, since this is a 
pretty fairly technical article, it might be well if I 
were to utilize the same diagrammatic device and 
terse method of description, to show the exact course 
of the first hand in which I participated at the party. 

A and B are our opponents, X my partner, and 
I (oddly enough) myself. A is Ralph Thibbets, one 
of those cool devils who think they know all about 
a game, and usually do. He has an irritating way 

[82] 



f) 



NOT ACCORDING TO HOYLE 

of laying down his cards, when the hand is about 
half played, and saying: "Well, the rest are mine," 
and the most irritating part of it all is that^ when 
you have insisted on figuring it out for yourself, he 
is found to be right. I disliked him from the first. 

B is Mrs. Lucas, who breathes hard and says 
nothing, but clanks her cards down with finality, 
seeming to say: "That for you! " She got me 
nervous. 

X, my partner, used to be a good friend of mine. 
And, so far as I am concerned, I would be per- 
fectly willing to let bygones be bygones and be on 
friendly terms again. 

In utilizing the expert's method of description, I 
shall improve on it slightly by also indicating the 
conversation accompanying each play, a feature 
which is of considerable importance in a game. 

B deals, and finally makes it three diamonds, after 
X has tried to bid hearts without encouragement 
from me. I pass as a matter of principle, not be- 
ing at all sure of this bidding proposition. 

I lead, with a clear field and no particular object 
in view, the 8 of diamonds. It looks as uncom- 
promising as any card in my hand. "Leading 
trumps! " says X with a raising of the eyebrows. 
" What do you know about that! " I exclaim. " I 
had forgotten that they were trumps. I must be 

[83] 



I 



OF ALL THINGS I 

asleep. Like the old Irishman when St. Peter asked 
him where he came from, and he said: * Begorra — ' " 
A cuts this story short by playing the 3 of dia- 
monds; X, with some asperity, discards the 3 of 
spades, and B takes the trick with the lo-spot. 
Silence. 

" That story of the Irishman and St. Peter," I 
continue, "was told to me by a fellow in Buffalo 
last week who had just come from France. He 
said that while he was in a place called ^ Mousong,' 
or ' Mousang,' he actually saw — " 

" Your play," says X. " Oh, I beg your pardon," 
I say, " whose jack of spades is that? " " Mine," 
says B, drumming on the table with her finger 
nails and looking about the room at the pictures. 
Having more poor diamonds than anything else in 
my hand, and aiming to get them out of the way 
as soon as possible to give the good cards a chance, 
I play the 5 of diamonds. 

" What, trumping it? Have you no spades? " 
shouts A. I can see that I have him rattled; so, 
although, as a matter of fact, I have got plenty of 
spades, I smile knowingly and sit tight. These 
smart Alecs make me sick, telling me what I should 
play and what I should not play. A accepts the 
inevitable and plays his 2 -spot. X^ considerably 
cheered up, plays the 4 and says: "Our trick, 

[84] 



m 



NOT ACCORDING TO HOYLE 



partner." I pick up the cards and mix them with 
those already in my hand, reverting, for the time, 
to poker tactics. This error, alone among all that 
I make during the game, is unobserved. 

"Well, I suppose that you people are all ex- 
cited over that new baby up at your house," I say 
pleasantly to A, just to show him that I can be 
gracious in victory as well as in defeat. "Let's 
see, is it a boy or a girl? " 

" It's your lead! " he replies shortly. 

" I beg your pardon," I say; " I certainly must be 
asleep to-night." And, as my thumb is on the 5 
of diamonds, I lead it. 

"Here, here! " says A, "wasn't it the 5 of 
diamonds that you trumped in with just a minute 
ago? " That man has second-sight. As a matter 
of fact, I suspect that there is something crooked 
about him. " Yes, it is," corroborates B in her long- 
est speech of the evening. X says: " Where is that 
trick that we took? " And then it is discovered 
that it has found its way into my hand, from which 
it is disentangled with considerable trouble and 
segregated. As for me, I pass the whole thing 
off as a joke. 

"I saw in the paper this morning," I began 
when the situation has become a little less compli- 
cated, "where a woman in Perth Amboy found a 

[85] 



OF ALL THINGS! 





Here, here ! ' says A, * wasn't it the 5 of diamonds you 
trumped in with a minute ago ? ' " 



[86] 



NOT ACCORDING TO HOYLE 

hundred dollars in the lining of an old lounge in — " 

" It's your lead, if you don't mind/' says A very 
distinctly. " You have made only one false start 
out of a possible three. Try again." I pretend not 
to hear this sarcasm, and, just to show him that 
there is life in the old dog yet, I lead my ace of 
spades. 

"Look here, my dear sir! " says A^ quite upset 
by now. " Only one hand ago you refused spades 
and trumped them. That revoking on your part 
gives us three tricks and we throw up the hand." 

" Fair enough," I retort cheerfully, " three is just 
what you bid, isn't it? Quite a coincidence, I call 
it," and with that I throw my cards on the table 
with considerable relief. Nothing good could have 
come of this hand, even if we had played until mid- 
night. 

From all sides now arose the familiar sounds of 
the post-mortem: " I had the jack, lo, 9, and 7, all 
good, but I just couldn't get in with them. ... If 
you had only led me your king, we could have set 
them at least two. ... I knew that Grace had the 
queen, but I didn't dare try to finesse. . . . We had 
simple honors. ... As soon as I saw you leading 
spades, I knew that there was nothing in it," etc., 
etc. 

But at our table there was no post-mortem. Not 

[87] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

because there had been no death, but there seemed 
to be nothing to say about it. So we sat, marking 
down our scores, until Dora came up behind me and 
said: " Well, dear, how is your game coming on? " 

As no one else seemed about to speak, I said: 
" Oh, finely, I'm getting the hang of it in no time." 

My partner muttered something about hanging 
being too good, which seemed a bit uncalled for. 

And so I went through the evening, meeting new 
people and making new friends. And, owing to 
Dora's having neglected to teach me the details of 
score keeping, I had to make a system up for my- 
self, with the result that I finished the evening with 
a total of 15,000 points on my card and won the first 
prize. 

" Beginner's luck," I called it with modest good 
nature. 



[88] 



IX 

FROM NINE TO FIVE 

ONE of the necessary qualifications of an effi- 
cient business man in these days of indus- 
trial literature seems to be the ability to write^ in 
clear and idiomatic English, a 1,000-word story on 
how efficient he is and how he got that way. A 
glance through any one of our more racy commer- 
cial magazines will serve nicely to illustrate my point, 
for it was after glancing through one of them only 
five minutes ago that the point suggested itself to 
me. 

" What Is Making Our Business Grow; " " My 
$10,000 System of Carbon-Copy Hunting; " " Mak- 
ing the Turn-Over Turn In; " " If I Can Make My 
Pencil Sharpenings Work, Why Can't You? " " Get- 
ting Sales Out of Sahara," etc., are some of the in- 
triguing titles which catch the eye of the student 
of world affairs as he thumbs over the business 
magazines on the news-stands before buying his 
newspaper. It seems as if the entire business world 
were devoting its working hours to the creation of 
a school of introspective literature. 

[89] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS I 



But the trouble with these writers is that they are 
all successful. There is too much sameness to their 
stuff. They have their little troubles at first, it is 
true, such as lack of coordination in the central t)^- 
ing department, or congestion of office boys in the 
room where the water cooler is situated; but sooner 
or later you may be perfectly sure that Right will 
triumph and that the young salesman will bring 
in the order that puts the firm back on its feet 
again. They seem to have no imagination, these 
writers of business confessions. What the art needs 
is some Strindberg of Commerce to put down on 
paper the sordid facts of Life as they really are, 
and to show, in bitter words of cynical realism, 
that ink erasers are not always segregated or vouch- 
ers always all that they should be, and that, be- 
hind the happy exterior of many a mahogany rail- 
ing, all is not so gosh-darned right with the world 
after all. 

Now, without setting myself up as a Strindberg, I 
would like to start the ball rolling toward a more 
realistic school of business literature by setting down 
in my rough, impulsive way a few of the items in 
the account of " How We Make Our Business Lose 
$100,000 a Year." 

All that I ask in the way of equipment is an 
illustration showing a square-jawed, clean-cut Amer- 

[90] 



FROM NINE TO FIVE 

ican business man sitting at a desk and shaking his 
finger at another man, very obviously the head of 
the sales department because it says so under the 
picture, who is standing with his thumbs in the arm- 




"A square-jawed American business man, etc., shaking his 
finger at another." 



holes of his waistcoat, gnawing at a big, black cigar, 
and looking out through the window at the smoke- 
stacks of the works. With this picture as a starter, 
and a chart or two, I can build up a very decent 
business story around them. 

In the first place let me say that what we have 
done in our business any firm can do in theirs. It 
is not that we have any extraordinary talents along 

[91] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS I 

organization lines. We simply have taken the les- 
sons learned in everyday trading, have tabulated 
and filed them in triplicate. Then we have forgotten 
them. 

I can best give an idea of the secret of our medi- 
ocrity as a business organization by outlining a 
tj^ical day in our offices. I do this in no spirit 
of boasting, but simply to show these thousands of 
systematized business men who are devoting them- 
selves to literature that somewhere in all this miasma 
of success there shines a ray of inefficiency, giving 
promise of the day that is to come. 

The first part of the morning in our establish- 
ment is devoted to the mail. This starts the day 
off right, for it gives every one something to do, 
which is, I have found, a big factor in keeping the 
place looking busy. 

Personally I am not what is known as a " snappy " 
dictator. It makes me nervous to have a stenog- 
rapher sitting there waiting for me to say some- 
thing so that she can pounce on it and tear it into 
hieroglyphics. I feel that, mentally, she is checking 
me up with other men who have dictated to her, and 
that I am being placed in Class 5a, along with the 
licensed pilots and mental defectives, and the more 
I think of it the more incoherent I become. If ex- 
act and detailed notes were to be preserved of one 

[92] 



FROM NINE TO FIVE 

of my dictated letters, mental processes, and all, 
they might read something like this: 

" Good morning, Miss Kettle. . . . Take a letter, 
please ... to the Nipco Drop Forge and Tool 
Company, Schenectady . . . S-c-h-e-c — er — well, 
Schenectady; you know how to spell that, I guess, 
Miss Kettle, ha! ha! . . . Nipco Drop Forge and 
Tool Company, Schenectady, New York. . . . Gen- 
tlemen — er (business of touching finger tips and 
looking at the ceiling meditatively) — Your favor of 
the 17 th inst. at hand, and in reply would state that 
— er (I should have thought this letter out before 
beginning to dictate and decided just what it is 
that we desire to state in reply) — and in reply would 
state that — er . . . our Mr. Mellish reports that — 
er . . . where is that letter from Mr. Mellish, Miss 
Kettle? . . . The one about the castings. . . . Oh, 
never mind, I guess I can remember what he said. 
. . . Let's see, where were we? . . . Oh, yes, that 
our Mr. Mellish reports that he shaw the sipment — 
I mean saw the shipment — what's the matter with 
me? (this girl must think that I'm a perfect fool) 
. . . that he shaw the sipment in question on the 
platform of the station at Miller's Falls, and that it 
— er . . . ah . . . 000m . . . (I'll have this girl 
asleep in her chair in a minute. I'll bet that she goes 
and tells the other girls that she has just taken a 

[93] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

letter from a man with the mind of an eight-year-old 
boy). . . . We could, therefore, comma, . . . what's 
the matter? . . . Oh, I didn't finish that other sen- 
tence, I guess. . . . Let's see, how did it go? . . . 
Oh, yes . . . and that I, or rather it, was in good 
shape . . . er, cross that out, please (this girl is 
simply wasting her time here. I could spell this 
out with alphabet blocks quicker and let her copy 
it) . . . and that it was in excellent shape at that 
shape — er ... or rather, at that time . . . er . . . 
period. New paragraph. 

" We are, comma, therefore, comma, unable to 
. . . hello, Mr. Watterly, be right with you in half 
a second. . . . I'll finish this later. Miss Kettle . . . 
thank you." 

When the mail is disposed of we have what is 
known as Memorandum Hour. During this period 
every one sends memoranda to every one else. If 
you happen to have nothing in particular about 
which to dictate a memorandum, you dictate a memo- 
randum to some one, saying that you have nothing 
to suggest or report. This gives a stimulating ex- 
change of ideas, and also helps to use up the blue 
memorandum blanks which have been printed at 
some expense for just that purpose. 

As an example of how this system works, I will 
give a t3^ical instance of its procedure. My part- 

[94] 



FROM NINE TO FIVE 

ner, let us say, comes in and sits down at the desk 
opposite me. I observe that his scarfpin is working 
its way out from his tie. I call a stenographer and 
say: " Take a memo to Mr. MacFurdle, please. In 
re Loosened Scarfpin. You are losing your scarf- 
pin." 

As soon as she has typed this it is given to Mr. 
MacFurdle's secretary, and a carbon copy is put 
in the files. Mr. MacFurdle, on receiving my 
memo, adjusts his scarfpin and calls his secretary. 

" A memo to Mr. Benchley, please. In re Tight- 
ened Scarfpin. Thank you. I have given the mat- 
ter my attention." 

As soon as I have received a copy of this type- 
written reply to my memorandum we nod pleas- 
antly to each other and go on with our work. In 
all, not more than half an hour has been consumed, 
and we have a complete record of the negotiations 
in our files in case any question should ever arise 
concerning them. In case no question should ever 
arise, we still have the complete record. So we 
can't lose — unless you want to call that half hour 
a loss. 

It is then almost lunch time. A quick glance 
at a pile of carbons of mill reports which have but 
little significance to me owing to the fact that the 
figures are illegible (it being a fifth-string carbon) ; 

[95] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 



a rapid survey of the matter submitted for my O. K., 
most of which I dislike to take the responsibility 
for and therefore pass on to Mr. Houghtelling for his 
O. K.; a short tussle in the washroom with the liquid- 
soap container which contains no Hquid soap and 
a thorough drying of the hands on my handkerchief, 
the paper towels having given out early in the morn- 
ing, and I am ready to go to lunch with a man from 
the Eureka Novelty Company who wants to sell us 
a central paste-supply system (whereby all the office 
paste is kept in one large vat in the storeroom, in- 
dividual brushfuls being taken out only on requisi- 
tions O. K.'d by the head of the department) . 

Both being practical business men, we spend only 
two hours at lunch. And, both being practical busi- 
ness men, we know all the subtleties of selling. It 
is a well-known fact that personality plays a big 
role in the so-called " selling game " (one of a series 
of American games, among which are " the news- 
paper game," " the advertising game," " the cloak- 
and-suit game," " the ladies' mackintosh and over- 
shoe game," " the seedless-raisin and dried-fruit 
game," etc.), and so Mr. Ganz of the Eureka Nov- 
elty Company spends the first hour and three-quar- 
ters developing his " personality appeal." All 
through the tomato bisque aux croutons and the 
roast prime ribs of beef, dish gravy, he puts into 

[96] 






FROM NINE TO FIVE 

practice the principles enunciated in books on Sell- 
ing, by means of which the subject at hand is de- 
ferred in a subtle manner until the salesman has 
had a chance to impress his prospect with his geni- 
ality and his smile (an attractive smile has been 
known to sell a carload of 1897 style derbies, ac- 
cording to authorities on The Smile in Selling), his 
knowledge of baseball, his rich fund of stories, and 
his general aversion to getting down to the dis- 
agreeable reason for his call. 

The only trouble with this system is that I have 
done the same thing myself so many times that I 
know just what his next line is going to be, and 
can figure out pretty accurately at each stage of 
his conversation just when he is going to shift 
to one position nearer the thing he has to sell. I 
know that he has not the slightest interest in my 
entertainment other than the sale of a Eureka Cen- 
tral Paste Supply System, and he knows that I 
know it, and so we spend an hour and three-quarters 
fooling the waiter into thinking that we are en- 
gaged in disinterested camaraderie. 

For fifteen minutes we talk business, and I agree 
to take the matter up with the directors at the next 
meeting, holding the mental reservation that a cen- 
tral paste supply system will be installed in our plant 
only over my dead body. 

[97] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 



This takes us until two-thirty, and I have to hurry 
back to a conference. We have two kinds of " con- 
ference." One is that to which the office boy refers 
when he tells the applicant for a job that Mr. 
Blevitch is " in conference." This means that Mr. 
Blevitch is in good health and reading the paper, 
but otherwise unoccupied. The other kind of " con- 
ference " is bona fide in so far as it implies that 
three or four men are talking together in one room, 
and don't want to be disturbed. 

This conference is on, let us say, the subject of 
Window Cards for display advertising: shall they be 
triangular or diamond-shaped? 

There are four of us present, and we all begin 
by biting off the ends of four cigars. Watterly 
has a pile of samples of window cards of various 
shapes, which he hangs, with a great deal of trou- 
ble, on the wall, and which are not referred to again. 
He also has a few ideas on Window Card Psy- 
chology. 

" It seems to me," he leads off, " that we have here 
a very important question. On it may depend the 
success of our Middle Western sales. The problem 
as I see it is this: what will be the reaction on the 
retina of the eye of a prospective customer made 
by the sight of a diamond-shaped card hanging in 
a window? It is a well-known fact in applied psy- 

[98] 



^ 



FROM NINE TO FIVE 



chology that when you take the average man into 
a darkened room, loosen his collar, and shout "Dia- 
monds! " at him suddenly, his mental reaction is one 
in which the ideas of Wealth, Value, Richness, etc., 




" The problem as I see it is this.' 



predominate. Now, it stands to reason that the 
visual reaction from seeing a diamond-shaped card 
in the window will . . ." 

" Excuse me a moment, George," says MacFurdle, 
who has absorbed some pointers on Distribution 
from a book entitled "The World Salesman," "I 
don't think that it is so important to get after the 
psychology of the thing first as it is to outline thor- 
oughly the Theory of Zone Apportionment on which 
we are going to work. If we could make up a chart, 

[99] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

showing in red ink the types of retail-stores and iii| 
green ink the types of jobber establishments, in this 
district, then we could get at the window display 
from that angle and tackle the psychology later, if 
at all. Now, on such a chart I would try to show 
the zones of Purchasing Power, and from these could 
be deduced . . ." 

" Just a minute, Harry," Inglesby interrupts, " let 
me butt in for half a second. That chart system 
is all very well when you are selling goods with which 
the public is already familiar through association 
with other brands, but with ours it is different. We 
have got to estimate the Consumer Demand first in ^5 
terms of dollar-and-a-quarter units, and build our ] 
selling organization up around that. Now, if I know < 
anything about human nature at all — and I think .^ 
I do, after being in the malleable-iron game for fif- 
teen years — the people in this section of the coun- 
try represent an entirely different trade current 
than . . ." 

At this point I offer a few remarks on one of 
my pet hobbies, the influence of the Gulf Stream on 
Regional Commerce, and then we all say again the 
same things that we said before, after which we 
say them again, the pitch of the conversation grow- 
ing higher at each repetition of views and the room 
becoming more and more filled with cigar smoke. 

[100] 



p 



FROM NINE TO FIVE 

Our final decision is to have a conference to-morrow 
afternoon, before which each one is to " think the 
matter over and report his reactions." 

This brings the day to a close. There has been 
nothing remarkable in it, as the reader will be the 
first one to admit. And yet it shows the secret of 
whatever we have not accomplished in the past year 
in our business. 

And it also shows why we practical business men 
have so little sympathy with a visionary, impracti- 
cal arrangement like this League of Nations. Presi- 
dent Wilson was all right in his way, but he was too 
academic. What we practical men in America want 
is deeds, not words. 



[lOl] 



X 

TURNING OVER A NEW LEDGER LEAF 

NEW YEAR'S morning approximately ninety- 
two million people in these United States will 
make another stab at keeping personal and house- 
hold accounts for the coming year. 

One month from New Year's there will be approxi- 
mately seventy- three of these accountants still in 
the race (all started). Of these, sixty will be groggy 
but still game and willing to lump the difference be- 
tween the actual balance in their pockets and the 
theoretical balance in the books under the elastic 
heading " General Expenses " or " Incidentals," and 
start again for February. The remaining thirteen, 
who came out even, will be either professors of ac- 
counting in business schools or out and out unre- 
liable. 

This high mortality rate among amateur account- 
ants is one of the big problems of modern house- 
hold efficiency, and is exceeded in magnitude only 
by the number of schemes devised to simplify house- 
hold accounting. Every domestic magazine, in the 
midst of its autobiographical accounts of unhappy 

[102] 



E^; 



TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF 

marriages, must needs run a chart showing how far 
a family with an income of $1,500 a year can go 
without getting caught and still put something aside 
for a canary. Every insurance company has had 
prepared by experts a table of figures explaining 
how, by lumping everything except Rent and In- 
cidentals under Luxuries and doing without them, 
you can save enough from the wreckage of $1,200 
a year to get in on their special Forty- Year Adjourn- 
ment Policy. 

Those publications which cannot get an expert 
to figure out how much you ought to spend per 
egg per hen-day will publish letters from young 
housewives showing how they made out a budget 
which in the end brought them in more money than 
they earned and had the grocer and electric light 
company owing them money. 

The trouble with all these vicarious budgets is 
that they presuppose, on the part of the user, an 
ability to add and subtract. They take it for 
granted that you are going to do the thing right. 
Now, with all due respect to our primary and sec- 
ondary school system, this is absurd. Here and 
there you may find some one who can take a page 
of figures and maul them over so that they will 
come out right at the bottom, but who wants to be 
a man like that? What fun does he get out of 

[103] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 



life, always sure of what the result is going to 
be? 

As for me, give me the regular method of addi- 
tion by logic; that is, if the result obtained is twelve 
removed from the result that should have been ob- 
tained, then, ergo, twelve is the amoimt by which 
you have miscalculated and it should, therefore, be 
added or subtracted, as the case may be, to or from 
the actual result somewhere up in the middle of 
the column, so that in the end the thing will bal- 
ance. And there you are, with just the same result 
as if you had worked for hours over the page and 
quibbled over every little point and figure. There is 
no sense in becoming a slave to numerical signs 
which in themselves are not worth the paper they 
are written on. It is the imagination that one puts 
into accounting that makes it fascinating. If free 
verse, why not free arithmetic? 

It is for the honest ones, who admit that they 
can't work one of the budget systems for the men- 
tally alert, that the accompanjdng one has been 
devised. 

Let us take, for instance, a family whose income 
is $750,000 a year, exclusive of tips. In the fam- 
ily are a father, mother and fox terrier. The ex- 
penses for such a family come under the head of 
Liabilities and are distributed among six accounts: 

[104] 



TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF; 

Food, Lodging, Extras, Extras, Incidentals and Ex- 
tras. For this couple I would advise the follow- 
ing system: 

Take the contents of the weekly pay envelope, 
$14,423.08 (if any one is mean enough to go and 
divide $750,000 into fifty-two parts to see if I have 
got it right, he will find that it doesn't quite come 
to eight cents, but you certainly wouldn't have me 
carry it out to any more places. It took me from 
three yesterday afternoon until after dinner to do 
what I did). Take the contents of the envelope and 
lay them on the kitchen table in little piles, so 
much for meat, so much for eggs, so much for ad- 
hesive plaster, etc., until the kitchen table is cov- 
ered. Then sweep it all into a bag and balance 
your books. 

Balancing the books is another point in the ideal 
system which often makes for trouble. Sticklers for 
form insist that the two sides of the page shall come 
out alike, even at the expense of your self-respect. 
It is the artificiality of this that hurts. No matter 
how much you spend, no matter how much you re- 
ceive, at the bottom of the page they must add up 
to the same thing, with a double red line under- 
neath them to show that the polls are closed. 

But since this is the accepted way of doing the 
thing, we might just as well concede the point and 

[105] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

lay our plans accordingly. First take the sum that 
you have left over in the household exchequer at 
the end of the mouth. Put it, or its equivalent in 
check form, on the table in front of you. Then, 
working backward, find out how much you have 
spent since the first of the month. This sum is 
the crux of the whole system. Divide it into as 
many equal parts as you have accounts. For in- 
stance, Food, Rent, Clothes, Insurance and Savings, 
Operating Expenses, Higher Life. If you can't di- 
vide it so that it comes out even, tuck a little bit 
on the Higher Life account. And, as the student of 
French says, '^ Voila " (there it is) ! 

Perhaps you have wondered what I meant by 
" Higher Life." I have. It might be well to state 
it here so that we can all get it clear in our minds. 
Under the " Higher Life " account you can charge 
everything that you want to do, but feel that you 
can't afford. If you want to take in an inconse- 
quential theatrical performance and can't quite 
square it with your conscience, figure it out this 
way: By going to that show you will become so dis- 
gusted with the futility of such things that you will 
come out of the theater all aglow with a resolve to 
do a man's work in the world just as soon as you 
have caught up with your sleep. Surely that comes 
under " Advancement " or " Higher Life." 

[io6] 



p 



TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF 



Insurance budget helps always include under 
" Advancement " money spent for lectures. Now, it 
may be that I have drifted away from the big things 
in life since I moved out into the country, but some- 
how I can't just at this moment recollect standing 
in line at a box office for a lecture. But then, my 
home life is very pleasant. 

Lectures would be a very convenient heading, 
nevertheless, to have in your budget. Then, any 
little items that slip your attention during the month 
you can group under lectures and mark off ten paces 
in your advancement chart. 

By way of outlining beforehand just what you 
can spend on this and that (and it is usually on 
" that ") it might be well to take another family 
with a representative income. Let us say that there 
are four in the family and that the income is about 
$1,000 per year too small. If such a family would 
sit down some evening and draw a chart showing 
father's earning capacity with one red line and 
the family spending capacity with one black line, 
they would not only have a pleasant evening, but 
they would have a nice, neat chart all drawn and 
suitable for framing. 

There is one little technical point that the ama- 
teur accountant will do well to remember. It gives 
a distinction to the page and shows that you are ac- 

[107] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

quainted with bookkeeping lore. It is this: Label 
your debit column " credits " and your credit col- 
umn "debits." You might think that what you 
receive into the exchequer would be credited and 



** They would have a nice, neat chart suitable for framing." 

your expenses debited, but that is where you miss 
the whole theory of practical accounting. That 
would be too simple to be efficient. You must wax 
transcendental, and say, " I, as an individuated en- 
tity, am nothing. Everything is all; all is every- 
thing." There is a transcendent Account, to which 
all other accounts are responsible, and hence money 
turned over to the Cinnamon Account is not cred- 
ited to that account, but rather debited to it, for 
Cinnamon hereby assumes the responsibility for the 

[io8] 



sy 



TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF 



sum. As money is spent for Cinnamon, its account 
is credited, for it is relieved of that responsibility. 
Don't start wondering where the responsibility 
finally settles or you will throw something out of 
its stride in your brain. 

Some people profess to scoff at the introduction 
of bookkeeping into the running of the household. 
It is simply because they never tasted the fascina- 
tion of the thing. 

The advantage of keeping family accounts is 
clear. If you do not keep them you are uneasily 
aware of the fact that you are spending more than 
you are earning. If you do keep them, you know 
it. 



[109] 



XI 

A PIECE OF ROAST BEEF 

PERSONALLY, I class roast beef with water- 
cress and vanilla cornstarch pudding as tasty 
articles of diet. It undoubtedly has more than the 
required number of calories; it leans over backward 
in its eagerness to stand high among our best pro- 
teins, and, according to a vivid chart in the back 
of the cookbook, it is equal in food value to three 
dried raisins piled one on the other plus peanut- 
butter the size of an egg. 

But for all that I can't seem to feel that I am 
having a good time while I am eating it. It stimu- 
lates the same nerve centers in me that a lantern- 
slide lecture on " Palestine — the Old and the New," 
does. 

However, I have noticed that there are people 
who are not bored by it; in fact, I have seen them 
deliberately order it in a restaurant when they had 
the choice of something else; so I thought that the 
only fair thing I could do would be to look into the 
matter and see if, in this great city, there weren't 

[no] 



A PIECE OF ROAST BEEF 

some different ways of serving roast beef to vary 
its monotony. 

Roast beef is not the same price in all eating- 
places. What makes the difference? What does 
a diner at the Ritz get in his " roast prime ribs of 
beef au jus" that makes it distinctive from the 
" Special to-day — roast beef and mashed potatoes " 
of the Bowery restaurant? 

To answer these questions I started out on a tour 
of the representative eating-places of some of our 
best known strata of society, and, whatever my con- 
clusions are, you may be sure that they are thor- 
oughly inexpert. 

First, I tried out what is known as the Bay State 
Lunch, so called because on Thursdays they have 
a fishcake special. It is one of the hundreds ol 
" self-serving " lunchrooms, where you approach the 
marble counter and give your order in a low tone 
to a man in a barber's coat, and then repeat it at 
intervals of one minute, each time louder and each 
time to a different man, until you are forced to point 
to a tub of salmon salad and say, " Some of that," 
for which your ticket is punched and you are al- 
lowed to take your portion and nurse it on the over- 
developed arm of a chair. 

Here the roast beef shot through the Punch and 
Judy arrangement in the wall, a piece of meat about 

[III] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

as large around as a man's-size mitten, steeping in its 
own gravy and of a pale reddish hue. The price was 
twenty cents, which included a dab of mashed potato 
dished out in an ice-cream scoop, a generous allow- 
ance of tender peas, two hot tea-biscuits and butter 
to match. 




"Considering the basic ingredient it was a perfectly 
satisfactory meal." 



Considering the basic ingredient, it was a per- 
fectly satisfactory meal, and I felt that twenty 
cents was little enough to pay for it, especially since 
it was going in on my expense account. 

For the next experiment I went to a restaurant 
where business men are wont to gather for luncheon, 
men who pride themselves on their acumen and ad- 
herence to the principles of efficiency. The place 

[112] 



A PIECE OF ROAST BEEE 

has a French name and its menus are printed on a 
card the size of a life insurance company's com- 
plimentary calendar, always an ominous sign. The 
roast beef here was served cold, with a plate of 
escarole salad (when I was a boy I used to have 
to dig escarole out of the front lawn with a trowel 
so that the grass could have a chance) for seventy- 
five cents. 

The meat bulked a little larger than at the Bay 
State Lunch, but when the fat had been cut away 
and trimmed off the salvage was about the size of a 
boy's mitten. As for the taste, the only difference 
that I could detect was that one had been hot and 
the other cold. 

And, incidentally, the waiter had some bosom 
friends in the next room who fascinated him so that 
it was all I could do to make him see that if he 
didn't come around to me once in a while, just as 
a matter of form, there would be no way for me to 
tip him. Beef and salad, plus tip, ninety cents. 

That evening I ambled up the Bowery until I 
came to the Busy Home Restaurant. On a black- 
board in front was written, " Roast Beef, Mashed 
Potatoes and Coffee, lo Cents." My old hunger 
again seized me. I said to myself: "Look herel 
Be a man I This thing is getting the best of you." 
But before I knew it I was inside and seated at 

[113] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

an oilcloth-covered table, saying, in a hoarse voice, 
"Roast beef! " 

The waiter was dressed in an informal costume, 
with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and a mulatto apron 
about his waist, but he smiled genially when he took 
my order and was back with it in two minutes. The 
article itself was of the regulation size, cut some- 
what thinner, perhaps, and bordering on the gray 
in hue, but undoubtedly roast beef. It, too, had an 
affinity for its own gravy and hid itself modestly 
under an avalanche of mashed potatoes. A cup of 
coffee was also included in the ten cents' initial ex- 
pense, but I somehow wasn't coffee-thirsty that night, 
and so didn't sample it. But I did help myself to 
the plate piled high with fresh bread which was 
left in front of me. All in all, it was what I should 
call a representative roast beef dinner. And I got 
more than ten cents' worth of calories, I know. 

But so far I had kept below the Fourteenth Street 
belt in my investigations. Roast beef is a cosmo- 
politan habit, and knows no arbitrary boundaries; 
so I went uptown. Into one of the larger of our 
largest hotels, one which is not so near the Grand 
Central Station as to be in the train-shed, and yet 
not so far removed from it as to be represented by 
a different Assemblyman. Here, I felt, would be 
the test. Could roast beef come back? Surrounded 

[114] 



A PIECE OF ROAST BEEF 

by glittering chandeliers and rich tapestries, snowy 
table linen and silver service, here was the chance 
for the ordinary roast beef to become a veritable 
dainty, with some character, some distinctive touch 
that should lift it above all that roast beef has ever 
meant before. I entered the dining-room, in high 
hopes. 

Clad in a walking suit of virile tweed, I consid- 
ered myself respectably dressed. Not ostentatiously 
respectable, mind you, but, since most of the other 
diners were in evening dress, rather distinguS, I 
thought. 

But apparently the hotel retainers weren't trained 
to look through a rough exterior and find the ster- 
ling qualities beneath. They looked through my 
rough exterior all right, but they didn't stop at 
my sterling qualities. They looked right through 
to the man behind me, and gave him the signal 
that there was a seat for him. 

Not to be outdone, however, I got my place in 
the sun by cleverly tripping my rival as he passed 
me, so that he fell into the fountain arrangement, 
while I sat down in the seat pulled out for him by 
the head waiter. And, once I was in, there was 
nothing for them to do but let me stay. 

After I had been there a few minutes a waiter 
came and put on a fresh table cloth. Five minutes 

[115] 



DF ALL THINGS I 

later another man placed a knife and spoon at my 
plate. Later in the evening a boy with a basket 
of rolls wandered by and deposited one on my ta- 
ble with a pair of pincers. Personally, I was rather 
glad that it was working out this way, for it would 
make my story all the better, but I might have really 
been in a hurry for my dinner. 

It wasn't long, as the crow flies, before one of 
the third assistant waiters unloosened enough to drop 
round and see if there was anything else I wanted 
besides one roll and a knife and spoon. I looked 
over the menu as if I were in a pretty captious mood, 
and then, with the air of an epicure who has tasted 
to the dregs all the condiments of Arabia and whose 
jaded palate refuses to thrill any longer, I ordered 
" roast beef." 

It was billed as "90 (.80)," which didn't strike 
me as being very steep, considering the overhead 
expense there must be in keeping little knots of 
waiters and 'bus-boys standing round doing noth- 
ing in the further corner of the room. 

The waiter wasn't very enthusiastic over my or- 
der, and something saved me from asking him if 
they threw in " a side " of mashed potatoes with 
the meat. He seemed to expect something more, 
even after I had ordered potatoes, so I suggested 
an artichoke. That cheered him up more than any- 

[116] 



A PIECE OF ROAST BEEF 









" 






























,5^ 


K 












V -^ 




Vt 


■Tu j) (^ <^ 


J 


I ^-^ 


k±i 


iC^ 








Vo^ 




i 



c^r^ 



"The waiter wasn't very enthusiastic over my order." 



[117] 



OF ALL THINGS.! 

thing I had done that evening, and he really got 
quite f ratty and said: " A little salad, sir? " Again 
I imitated a man who has had more experience with 
salads than any other three men put together and 
who has found them a miserable sham. 

" No; that will be all for now," I said, and turned 
wearily away. I wanted to tell him that I had a 
dinner coat at home that looked enough sight bet- 
ter than his, but there is no use in making a scene 
when it can be avoided. 

During the next twenty minutes the orchestra 
played once and I ate my roll. Then the roast 
beef came. 

On a silver platter, with a silver cover, it was 
placed before me under the best possible scenic 
conditions. But the thing that met my gaze when 
the cover was lifted might just as well have been 
the same property piece of roast beef that was 
keeping company with a dab of mashed potato in 
the Bay State Lunch. It had a trifle more fat, was 
just a shade pinker, and perhaps a micrometer could 
have detected a bit more bulk; but, so far as I was 
concerned or so far as the calories were concerned, 
it was the same. I won't say that it was the same 
as the Roast Beef Special of the Bowery Restaurant, 
because the service in the Bowery Restaurant was 
infinitely better. 

[ii8] 



A PIECE OF ROAST BEEF 

As a fitting garniture to such a dish, there was a 
corsage of watercress draped on the corner of the 
salver. At any rate, it could be said for it that 
it was not intoxicating, and so could never cause 
any real misery in this world. 

I nibbled at my roast beef, but my spirit was 
broken. I had gone through a week of self-denial, 
ordering roast beef when I craved edibles, eating 
at restaurants while my family waited for me at 
home, and here was the result of my researches: 
Roast beef is roast beef, and nothing can prevent 
it. From the ten-cent order of the Busy Home Res- 
taurant, up through to the piece I was then eating, 
it was the same grim reality, the only justification 
for a difference in price being a silver salver or a 
waiter in a tuxedo. 

" But," I said to myself, " eighty cents isn't so 
much, at that. Besides, I have heard the orchestra 
play one tune every half-hour, and have had a kind 
word from one of the charges d'affaires of the wait- 
er's staff." 

This quite reconciled me, until my check was 
brought. There, added to the initial expense of 
eighty cents, was the upkeep, such as " Cover, 25c.''' 
" Potatoes, 30c." And to this must be added the 
modest fee of twenty cents to the waiter and ten 
cents to the hat-boy who gave me the wrong hat. 

[ii9l 



OF ALL THINGS! 

Total expense for one piece of roast beef, $1.70. 
These investigations may not prove to be much 
of a contribution to modern science or economics. 
I doubt if they are ever incorporated in any text- 
book, even if it should be a textbook on this very 
subject. But I must take credit to myself for one 
thing: Not once throughout the whole report have 
I alluded to the Tenderloin District. 



[120] 



XII 

JHE COMMUNITY MASQUE AS A 
SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR 

WITH War and Licker removed from the list 
of " What's Going on This Week," how will 
mankind spend the long summer evenings? Some 
advocate another war. Others recommend a piece 
of yeast in a glass of grape-juice. The effect is said 
to be equally devastating. 

But there is a new school, led by Percy Mackaye, 
which brings forward a scheme for occupying the 
spare time of the world which has, at least, the 
savor of novelty. It presents the community 
masque as a substitute for war. Whenever a neigh- 
borhood, or county, feels the old craving for blood- 
letting and gas-bombing coming on, a town meeting 
is to be called and plans drawn up for the presen- 
tation of a masque entitled " Democracy " or " From 
Chrysalis to Butterfly." In this simple way, one 
and all will be kept out in the open air and will 
get to know each other better, thus relieving their 
bellicose cravings right there on the village green 
among themselves, without dragging a foreign na- 

[121] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

tion into the mess at all. The slogan is " Fight 
Your Neighbors First. Why Go Abroad for War? " 
The community masque idea is all right in itself. 
There certainly can be no harm in dressing up to 
repiesent the Three Platoon System, or the Spirit 
of Machinery, and reciting free verse to the effect 
that: 

" I am the Three Platoon System. Firemen I rep- 
resent. 
And the clash and clang of the Hook and Ladder 
Company. '* 

No one could find fault with that, provided that 
those taking part in the thing do so of their own 
free will and understand what they are doing. 

The trouble with the community masque is not 
so much with the masque as with the community. 
For while the masque may be a five star sporting 
extra hot from the presses of Percy Mackaye, the 
community is the same old community that has 
been getting together for inter-Sunday School track- 
meets and Wig and Footlight Club Amateur The- 
atricals for years and years, and the result has al- 
ways been the same. 

Let us say, for instance, that the community of 
Wimblehurst begins to feel the lack of a good, rous- 

[122] 



A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR 

ing war to keep the Ladies' Guild and the men over 
thirty-five busy. What could be more natural than 
to call in Mr. Mackaye, and say: " What have you 
got in the way of a nice masque for a suburban dis- 
trict containing many socially possible people 
and others who might do very well in ensemble 
work? '' 

Something entitled " The March of Civilization " 
is selected, because it calls for Boy Scout uniforms 
and a Goddess of Liberty costume, all of which are 
on hand, together with lots of Red Cross regalia, 
left over from the war drives. The plot of the thing 
concerns the adventures of the young girl Civiliza- 
tion who leaves her home in the Neolithic Period 
accompanied only by her faithful old nurse Lan- 
guage and Language's little children the Vowels and 
the Consonants, She is followed all the way from 
the Neolithic Age to the Present Time by the evil 
spirit. Indigestion, but, thanks to the helpful offices 
of the Spirits of Capillary Attraction, and Inde- 
structibility of Matter, she overcomes all obstacles 
and reaches her goal, The League of Nations, at 
last. 

But during the course of her wanderings, there 
have been all kinds of sub-plots which bring the 
element of suspense into the thing. For instance, 
it seems that this person Indigestion has found out 

[123] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

something about Civilization's father which gives 
him the upper hand over the girl, and he, together 
with the two gunmen, Heat and Humidity, arrange 
all kinds of traps for the poor thing to fall into. 
But she takes counsel with the kind old lady, Self- 
Determination of Peoples, and is considerably 
helped by the low comedy character, Obesity, who 
always appears at just the right moment. So in the 
end, there is a big ensemble, involving Boy Scouts, 
representatives of those Allies who happen to be in 
good standing in that particular month, seven boys 
and girls personifying the twelve months of the year. 
Red Cross workers, the Mayor's Committee of Wel- 
come, a selection of Major Prophets, children typi- 
fying the ten different ways of cooking an egg, and 
the allrpervading Spirit of the Post-Office Depart- 
ment, seated on a dais in the rear and watching over 
the assemblage with kindly eyes and an armful of 
bricks. 

This, then, is in brief outline, "The March of 
Civilization," selected for presentation by the Com- 
munity Council of Wimblehurst. It is to be done 
on the edge of the woods which line the golf- 
course, and on paper, the thing shapes up rather 
well. 

Considerable hard feeling arises, however, over 
the choice of the children to play the parts of the 

[124] 



ii 



A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR 



Vowels and the Consonants, It is, of course, not 
possible to have all the vowels and consonants rep- 
resented, as they would clutter up the stage and 
might prove unwieldy in the allegretto passages. 
A compromise is therefore effected by personifying 
only the more graceful ones, like S and the lower- 
case /, and this means that a certain discrimination 
must be used in selecting the actors. It also means 
that a great many little girls are going to be disap- 
pointed and their mothers^ feelings outraged. 

Little Alice Withstanley is chosen to play the part 
of the Craft Guild Movement in Industry, showing 
the rise of cooperation and unity among the work- 
ing-classes. She is chosen because she has blonde 
hair which can be arranged in braids down her back, 
obviously essential to a proper representation of in- 
dustrial team-work as a moving force in the world's 
progress. It so happens, however, that the daughter 
of the man who is cast for Humidity has had her 
eyes on this ingenue part ever since the printed text 
was circulated and had virtually been promised it 
by the Head of the House Committee of the Coun- 
try Club, through whose kindness the grounds were 
to be used for the performance. There is a heated 
discussion over the merits of the two contestants 
between Mrs. Withstanley and the mother of the 
betrayed girl, which results in the withdrawal of 

[125] 



"^ 



OF ALL THINGS! 



the latter's offer to furnish Turkish rugs for the 
Oriental Decadence scene. 

Following this, the rougher element of the com- 
munity — enlisted to take part in the scenes showing 





' There is a heated discussion between Mrs. Withstanley and the 
mother of the betrayed girl." 

the building of the Pyramids and the first Battle of 
Bull Run — appear at one of the early rehearsals in 
a state of bolshevik upheaval, protesting against 
the unjust ruling which makes them attend all re- 
hearsals and wait around on the side hill until their 
scenes are on, keeping them inactive sometimes 
from two to three hours, according to the finish with 
which the principals get through the prologue and 
opening scenes showing the Creation. The pro- 

[126] 



A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR 

letariat present an ultimatum, saying that the Com- 
mittee in charge can either shorten their waiting 
hours or remove the restrictions on crap-shooting 
on the side-hill during their periods of inaction. 

There is a meeting of the Director and his assist- 
ants who elect a delegation to confer with the strik- 
ing legionaries, with the result that no compromise 
is reached, the soviet withdraws from the masque 
in a body, threatening to set fire to the grass on 
the first night of the performance. 

During the rehearsals the husband of the woman 
who is portraying Winter Wheat is found wandering 
along the brookside with her sister cereal Spring 
Wheat, which, of course, makes further polite co- 
operation between these two staples impossible, and 
the Dance of the Food Stuffs has to be abandoned 
at the last moment. This adds to the general ten- 
sion. 

Three nights before the first performance the Di- 
rector calls every one to a meeting in the trophy 
room of the Club-house and says that, so far as he 
is concerned, the show is off. He has given up his 
time to come out here, night after night, in an at- 
tempt to put on a masque that will be a credit to 
the community and a significant event in the world 
of art, and what has he found? Indifference, ir- 
responsibility, lack of cooperation, non-attendance 

[127] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

at rehearsals, and a spirit of laissez-faire in the face 
of which it is impossible to produce a successful 
masque. Consideration for his own reputation, as 
well as that of the township, makes it necessary 




"The audience is composed chiefly of the aged and 
the infirm." 



for him to throw the whole thing over, here and 
now. 

The Chairman of the Committee then gets up and 
cries a little, and says that he is sure that if every 
one agrees to pull together during these last three 
days and to attend rehearsals faithfully and to try 
to get plenty of sleep, Mr. Parsleigh, the coach, will 
consent to help them through with the performance, 
and he asks every one who is willing to cooperate 
to say " Aye." Every one says " Aye " and Mr. 
Parsleigh is won over. 

As for the masque itself, it is given, of course; 
and as most of the able-bodied people of the com- 

[128] 



A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR 

munity are taking part, the audience is composed 
chiefly of the aged and the infirm, who catch mus- 
cular rheumatism from sitting out-of-doors and are 
greatly bored, except during those scenes when their 
relatives are taking part. The masque is hailed as 
a great success, however, in spite of the fact that 
the community has been disrupted and social life 
made impossible until the next generation grows up 
and agrees to let bygones be bygones. 
But as a substitute for war, it has no equal, 



[129] 



XIII 
CALL FOR MR. KENWORTHY! 

A GREAT many people have wondered to 
themselves, in print, just where the little 
bkck laundry-studs go after they have been 
yanked from the shirt. Others pass this by as in- 
consequential, but are concerned over the ultimate 
disposition of all the pencil stubs that are thrown 
away. Such futile rumination is all well enough 
for those who like it. As for me, give me a big, 
throbbing question like this: "Who are the people 
that one hears being paged in hotels? Are they real 
people or are they decoys? And if they are real 
people, what are they being paged for? " 

Now, there's something vital to figure out. And 
the? best of it is that it can be figured out by the 
simple process of following the page to see whether 
he ever finds any one. 

In order that no expense should be spared, I 
picked out a hotel with poor service, which means 
that it was an expensive hotel. It was so expensive 
that all you could hear was the page's voice as he 

[130] 



p 



CALL FOR MR. KENWORTHY! 



walked by you; his footfalls made no noise in the 
extra heavy Bokhara. It was just a mingling of 
floating voices, calling for " Mr. Bla-bla, Mr. 
Schwer-a-a, Mr. Twa-a-a." 

Out of this wealth of experimental material I 
picked a boy with a discouraged voice like Wallace 
Eddinger's, who seemed to be saying "I'm calling 
these names — because that's my job — if I wasn't 
calling these — I'd be calling out cash totals in an 
honor system lunchery — but if any one should ever 
answer to one of these names — I'd have a poor 
spell." 

Allowing about fifteen feet distance between us 
for appearance's sake, I followed him through the 
lobby. He had a bunch of slips in his hand and 
from these he read the names of the pagees. 

"Call for Mr. Kenworthy— Mr. Shriner— Mr. 
Bodkin— Mr. Blevitch— Mr. Kenworthy— Mr. Bod- 
kin — Mr. Kenworthy — Mr. Shriner — call for Mr, 
Kenworthy — Mr. Blevitch — Mr. Kenworthy.^' 

Mr. Kenworthy seemed to be standing about a 
20 per cent better chance of being located than any 
of the other contestants. Probably the boy was of 
a romantic temperament and liked the name. Some- 
times that was the only name he would call for mile 
upon mile. It occurred to me that perhaps Mr. 
Kenworthy was the only one wanted^ and that the 

[131] 



OF ALL THINGS! 



1 




"Sometimes that was the only name he would call for mile 

upon mile." 

[132] 



CALL FOR MR. KENWORTHYI 

other names were just put in to make it harder, or 
to give body to the thing. 

But when we entered the bar the youth shifted 
his attack. The name of Kenworthy evidently had 
begun to cloy. He was fed up on romance and 
wanted something substantial, homely, perhaps, but 
substantial. 

So he dropped Kenworthy and called: "Mr. 
Blevitch. Call for Mr. Blevitch— Mr. Shriner— Mr. 
Bodkin— Mr. Blevitch—" 

But even this subtle change of tactics failed to net 
him a customer. We had gone through the main 
lobby, along the narrow passage lined with young 
men waiting on sofas for young women who would 
be forty minutes late, through the grill, and now 
had crossed the bar, and no one had raised even an 
eyebrow. No wonder the boy's voice sounded dis- 
couraged. 

As we went through one of the lesser dining- 
rooms, the dining-room that seats a lot of heavy men 
in business suits holding cigarettes, who lean over 
their plates the more confidentially to converse with 
their blond partners, in this dining-room the plain- 
tive call drew fire. One of the men in business 
suits, who was at a table with another man and two 
women, lifted his head when he heard the sound 
of names being called. 

[133] 



m 



OF ALL THINGS I 



" Boy! " he said, and waved like a traffic officer 
signaling, " Come! '* 

Eagerly the page darted forward. Perhaps this 
was Mr. Ken worthy! Or better yet, Mr. Blevitch. 




"Anything here for Studz? " 



" Anything here for Studz? " said the man in the 
business suit, when he was sure that enough people 
were listening. 

"No, sir," sighed the boy. " Mr. Blevitch, Mr. 
Kenworthy, Mr. Shriner, Mr. Bodkin? " he sug- 
gested, hopefully. 

" Naw," replied the man, and turned to his asso- 

[134] 



CALL FOR MR. KENWORTHYI 

dates with an air of saying: " Rotten service here 
— ^just think of it, no call for me! " 

On we went again. The boy was plainly skep- 
tical. He read his lines without feeling. The man- 
agement had led him into this; all he could do was 
to take it with as good grace as possible. 

He slid past the coat-room girl at the exit (no 
small accomplishment in itself) and down a corridor, 
disappearing through a swinging door at the end. 
I was in no mood to lose out on the finish after fol- 
lowing so far, and I dashed after him. 

The door led into a little alcove and another pal- 
pitating door at the opposite end showed me where 
he had gone. Setting my jaw for no particular rea- 
son, I pushed my way through. 

At first, like the poor olive merchant in the 
Arabian Nights I was blinded by the glare of lights 
and the glitter of glass and silver. Oh, yes, and by 
the snowy whiteness of the napery, too. " By the 
napery of the neck " wouldn't be a bad line to get 
off a little later in the story. I'll try it. 

At any rate, it was but the work of a minute for 
me to realize that I had entered by a service en- 
trance into the grand dining-room of the establish- 
ment, where, if you are not in evening dress, you are 
left to munch bread and butter until you starve to 
death and are carried out with your heels dragging, 

[135] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

like the uncouth lout that you are. It was, if I may 
be allowed the phrase, a galaxy of beauty, with 
every one dressed up like the pictures. And I had 
entered 'way up front, by the orchestra. 

Now, mind you, I am not ashamed of my gray 
suit. I like it, and my wife says that I haven't had 
anything so becoming for a long time. But in it I 
didn't check up very strong against the rest of the 
boys in the dining-room. As a gray suit it is above 
reproach. As a garment in which to appear single- 
handed through a trapdoor before a dining-room of 
well dressed Middle Westerners it was a fizzle from 
start to finish. Add to this the items that I had to 
snatch a brown soft hat from my head when I found 
out where I was, which caused me to drop the three 
evening papers I had tucked under my arm, and 
you will see why my up-stage entrance was the sig- 
nal for the impressive raising of several dozen eye- 
brows, and why the captain approached me just 
exactly as one man approaches another when he is 
going to throw him out. 

(Blank space for insertion of " napery of neck" 
line, if desired. Choice optional with reader.) 

I saw that anything that I might say would be 
used against me, and left him to read the papers I 
had dropped. One only lowers one's self by having 
words with a servitor. 

[136] 



CALL FOR MR. KENWORTHYJ 

Gradually I worked my way back through the 
swinging doors to the main corridor and rushed 
down to the regular entrance of the grand dining- 
salon, to wait there until my quarry should emerge. 
Suppose he should find all of his consignees in this 
dining-room! I could not be in at the death then, 
and would have to falsify my story to make any 
kind of ending at all. And that would never do. 

Once in a while I would catch the scent, when, 
from the humming depths of the dining-room, I 
could hear a faint " Call for Mr. Kenworthy " ris- 
ing above the click of the oyster shells and the soft 
crackling of the " potatoes Julienne " one against 
another. So I knew that he had not failed me, and 
that if I had faith and waited long enough he would 
come back. 

And, sure enough, come back he did, and with- 
out a name lost from his list. I felt like cheering 
when I saw his head bobbing through the melee of 
waiters and 'bus-boys who were busy putting clean 
plates on the tables and then taking them off again 
in eight seconds to make room for more clean 
plates. Of all discouraging existences I can imagine 
none worse than that of an eternally clean plate. 
There can be no sense of accomplishment, no glow 
of duty done, in simply being placed before a man 
and then taken away again. It must be almost as 

[137] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 

bad as paging a man who you are sure is not in 
the hotel. 

The futility of the thing had already got on the 
page's nerves, and in a savage attempt to wring a 
little pleasure out of the task he took to welding 
the names, grafting a syllable of one to a syllable of 
another, such as " Call for Mr. Kenbodkin — Mr. 
Shrineworthy — Mr. Ble\dtcher." 

This gave us both amusement for a little while, 
but your combinations are limited in a thing like 
that, and by the time the griU was reached he was 
saving the names correctly and with a little more 
assurance. 

It was in the grill that the happy event took place. 
Mr. Shriner, the one of whom we expected least, 
suddenly turned up at a table alone. He was a 
quiet man and not at all worked up over his imex- 
pected honor. He signaled the boy with one hand 
and went on taking soup with the other, and learned, 
without emotion, that he was wanted on the tele- 
phone. He even made no move to leave his meal toj 
answer the call, and when last seen he was adding 
pepper with one hand and taking soup with the] 
other. I suspect that he was a ^* plant," or a plain-] 
clothes house detective, placed there on purpose to 
deceive me. 

We had been to even.^ nook of the hotel by this] 

[138] 



CALL FOR MR. KENWORTHYl 

time, except the writing-room, and, of course, no 
one would ever look there for patrons of the hotel. 
Seeing that the boy was about to totter, I went up 
and spoke to him. He continued to totter, think- 
ing, perhaps, that I was Mr. Kenworthy, his long- 
lost beau-ideal. But I spoke kindly to him and 
offered him a piece of chocolate almond-bar, and 
soon, in true reporter fashion, had wormed his 
secret from him before he knew what I was really 
after. 

The thing I wanted to find out was, of course, 
just what the average is of replies to one paging 
trip. So I got around it in this manner: offering 
him another piece of chocolate almond-bar, I said, 
slyly: "Just what is the average number of replies 
to one paging trip? " 

I think that he had suspected something at first, 
but this question completely disarmed him, and, 
leaning against an elderly lady patron, he told me 
everything. 

" Well," he said, " it's this way: sometimes I find 
a man, and sometimes I can go the rounds without 
a bite. To-night, for instance, here IVe got four 
names and one came across. That's about the 
average — perhaps one in six." 

I asked him why he had given Mr. Kenworthy 
such a handicap at the start. 

[139] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

A faint smile flickered across his face and then 
flickered back again. 

" I call the names I think will be apt to hang 
round in the part of the hotel I'm in. Mr. Ken- 
worthy would have to be in the dressy dining- 
room or in the lobby where they wait for ladies. 
You'd never find him in the bar or the Turkish 
baths. On the other hand, you'll never find a man 
by the name of Blevitch anywhere except in the bar. 
Of course, I take a chance and call every name once 
in so often, no matter where I am, but, on the whole, 
I uses my own discretion." 

I gave him another piece of chocolate and the 
address of a good bootmaker and left him. What I 
had heard had sobered me, and the lights and music 
suddenly seemed garish. It is no weak emotion to 
feel that you have been face to face with a mere boy 
whose chances of success in his work are one to six. 

And I found that he had not painted the lily in 
too glowing terms. I followed other pages that 
night — some calling for " Mr. Strudel," some for 
" Mr. Carmickle," and one was broad-minded 
enough to page a '' Mrs. Bemis." But they all came 
back with that wan look in their eyes and a break 
in their voices. 

And each one of them was stopped by the man in 
the business suit in the downstairs dining-room and 

[140] 



i 



CALL FOR MR. KENWORTHYI 

each time he considered it a personal affront that 
there wasn't a call for " Studz." 

Some time I'm going to have him paged, and 
when he comes out I shall untie his necktie for ilim. 



[141] 



XIV 
FOOTBALL; COURTESY OF MR. MORSE 

SUNDAY morning these fine fall days are taken 
up with reading about the " 40,000 football 
enthusiasts " or the " gaily-bedecked crowd of 
60,000 that watched the game on Saturday." And 
so they probably did, unless there were enough men 
in big fur -coats who jumped up at every play and 
yelled " Now we're off I " thus obstructing the view 
of an appreciable percentage. 

But why stop at the mention of the paltry 50,000 
who sat in the Bowl or the Stadium? Why forget 
the twice 50,000 all over the country, in Qiicago, 
St. Louis, San Francisco, Atlanta, who watched the 
same game over the ticker, or sat in a smoke-fogged 
room listening to telegraphic announcements, play 
by play, or who even stood on the curbing in front 
of a newspaper office and watched an impartial 
employee shove a little yellow ball along a black- 
board, usually indicating the direction in which the 
real football was not going. Since it is so impor- 
tant to give the exact number of people who saw the 

[142] 



r 



FOOTBALL 



game, why not do the thing up right and say: " Re- 
turns which are now coming in from the Middle 
West, with some of the rural districts still to be 
heard from, indicate that at least 145,566 people 
watched the Yale-Princeton football game yester- 
day. Secretary Dinwoodie of the San Francisco 
Yale Club telegraphed late last night that the final 
count in that city would probably swell the total to 
a round 150,395. This is, or will be, the largest 
crowd that ever assembled in one country to watch 
a football game." 

And watching the game in this vicarious manner 
isn't so bad as the fellow who has got tickets and 
carfare to the real game would like to have it. You 
are in a warm room, where you can stretch your 
legs and regulate your remarks to the intensity of 
your emotions rather than to the sex of your neigh- 
bors. And as for thrills! "Dramatic suspense" 
was probably first used as a term in connection with 
this indoor sport. 

The scene is usually some college club in the city 
— a big room full of smoke and graduates. At one 
end is a score-board and miniature gridiron, along 
which a colored counter is moved as the telegraph 
behind the board clicks off the plays hot from the 
real gridiron. There is also an announcer, who, by 
way of clarifying the message depicted on the 

[143] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

board, reads the wrong telegram in a loud, clear 
tone. 

Just as the crowd in the football arena are crouch- 
ing down in their fur coats the better to avoid 
watching the home team fumble the kick-off, the 
crowds two and ten hundred miles away are settling 
back in their chairs and lighting up the old pipes, 
while the German-silver-tongued announcer steps to 
the front of the platform and delivers the following: 

" Yale won the toss and chose to defend the south 
goal, Princeton taking the west." 

This mistake elicits much laughter, and a witty 
graduate who has just had lunch wants to know, as 
one man to the rest of the house, if it is puss-in-the- 
corner that is being played. 

The instrument behind the board goes " Tick-ity- 
tick- tick- 1 icki ty . " 

There is a hush, broken only by the witty gradu- 
ate, who, encouraged by his first success, wants to 
know again if it is puss-in-the-corner that is being 
played. This fails to gain. 

" Gilblick catches the kick-off and runs the ball 
back to his own 3 -yard line, where he is downed in 
his tracks," comes the announcement. 

There is a murmur of incredulity at this. The 
little ball on the board shoots to the middle of the 
field. 

[144] 



FOOTBALL 

" Hey, how about that? " shout several precincts. 

The announcer steps forward again. 

" That was the wrong announcement," he admits. 
" Tweedy caught the kick-off and ran the ball back 
twenty-five yards to midfield, where he is thrown 
for a loss. On the next play there was a forward 
pass, Klung to Breakwater, which — " 

Here the message stops. Intense excitement. 

" Tickity-tickity-tick-tickity." 

The man who has $5 on the game shuts his eyes 
and says to his neighbor: " I'll bet it was inter- 
cepted." 

A wait of two triple-space minutes while the an- 
nouncer winds his watch. Then he steps forward. 
There is a noisy hush. 

" It is estimated that 50,000 people filed into the 
Palmer Stadium to-day to watch Yale and Prince- 
ton in their annual gridiron contest," he reads. 
" Yale took the field at five minutes of 2, and was 
greeted by salvos and applause and cheering from 
the Yale section. A minute later the Princeton team 
appeared, and this was a signal for the Princeton 
cohorts to rise as one man and give vent to their 
famous ^ Undertaker's Song.' " 

" How about that forward pass? " This, as one 
man, from the audience. 

The ball quivers and starts to go down the field. 

[145] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 



A mighty shout goes up. Then something happens, 
and the ball stops, looks, listens and turns in the 
other direction. Loud groans. A wooden slide in 
the mechanism of the scoreboard rattles into place, 
upside down.. Agile spectators figure out that it 
says " Pass failed." 

Every one then sinks back and says, "They 
ought not to have tried that." If the quarterback 
could hear the graduates' do-or-die backing of their 
team at this juncture he would trot into the locker J 
building then and there. 

Again the clear voice from the platform: 

" Tweedy punts — " (noisy bond-salesman in back 
of room stands up on a chair and yells " Yea! " 
and is told to " Shut up " by three or four dozen 
neighbors) " to Gumble on his 15-yard line. Gum^ 
ble fumbles." 

The noisy bond-salesman tries to lead a cheer bul 
is prevented. 

Frightful tension follows. Who recovered? 
Whose ball is it? On what line? Wet palms are 
pressed against trouser legs. How about it? 

"Tick-tickity-tick-tickity-tickity-tickity." 

You can hear the announcer's boots squeak as he 
steps forward. 

" Mr. A. T. Blevitch is wanted on the telephone,*' 
he enunciates. 

[146] 



FOOTBALE 

Mr. A. T. Blevitch becomes the most unpopular 
man in that section of the country. Every one turns 
to see what a man of his stamp can look like. He 
is so embarrassed that he slinks down in his seat 
and refuses to answer the call. 




"Noisy bond-salesman in back of room 
stands up on chair and yells * Yea ! * " 

" Klung goes around right end for a gain of two 
yards," is the next message from the front. 
The bond-salesman shouts "Yea! " 

[147] 



I 



OF ALL THINGS! 



" How about that fumble? " shouts every one 
else. 

The announcer goes behind the scenes to talk it 
over with the man who works the Punch-and-Judy, 
and emerges, smiling. 

" In the play preceding the one just announced," 
he says, " Gumble fumbled and the ball was re- 
covered by Breakwater, who ran ten yards for a 
touchdown — " 

Pandemonium! The bond-salesman leads himself 
in a cheer. The witty man says, " Nothing to it." 

There is comparative quiet again, and every one 
lights up the old pipes that have gone out. 

The announcer steps forward with his hand raised 
as if to regulate traffic. 

" There was a mistake in the announcement just 
made," he says pleasantly. " In place of ^ touch- 
down * read * touchback.' The ball is now in play m 
on the 20-yard line, and Kleenwell has just gone ^ 
through center for three yards." 

By this time no one in the audience has any defi- 
nite idea of where the ball is or who has it. On the 
board it is hovering between midfield and second 
base. 

" On the next play Legly punts — " 

" Block that punt! Block that punt! " warns the 
bond-salesman, as if it were the announcer who was 
opposing Legly. 

[148] 



FOOTBALL 

"Sit down, you poor fish! " is the consensus of 
opinion. 

"Legly punts to Klung on the latter's 25-yard 
line, where the first period ends." 

And so it goes throughout the game; the an- 
nouncer calling out gains and the dummy football 
registering corresponding losses; Messrs. A. T. 
Blevitch and L. H. Yank being wanted on the tele- 
phone in the middle of forward passes; the noisy 
person in the back of the room yelling " Yea " on 
the slightest provocation and being hushed up at 
each outbreak; and every one wondering what the 
quarterback meant by calling for the plays he did. 

In smaller cities, where only a few are gathered 
together to hear the results, things are not done on 
such an elaborate scale. The dummy gridiron and 
the dummy announcer are done away with and the 
ten or a dozen rooters cluster about the news ticker, 
most of them with the intention of watching for 
just a few minutes and then going home or back to 
the office. And they always wait for just one more 
play, shifting from one foot to the other, until the 
game is over. 

About a ticker only the three or four lucky ones 
can see the tape. The rest have to stand on tip-toe 
and peer over the shoulders of the man in front. 
They don't care. Some one will always read the 
results aloud, just as a woman will read aloud the 

[149] 



^ 



OF ALL THINGS! 

cut-ins at the movies. The one who is doing the 
reading usually throws in little advance predictions 
of his own when the news is slow in coming, with 
the result that those in the back get the impression 
that the team has at least a " varied attack/' effect- 
ing at times a field goal and a forward pass in the 
same play. 

A critical period in the game, as it comes dribbling 
in over the ticker, looks something like this: 
YALE . PRINCTON . GAME. . . .CHEKFMKL 

KLUNG . GOES . AROUND . LEFT . 

END . FOR . A . GAIN . OF . YDS A 

. FORWARD . PASS . TWEEDY . TO . KLUNG 

. NETS (Ticker stops ticking). 

Murmurs of " Come on, there, whasser matter? " 
Some one suggests that the pass was illegal and 
that the whole team has been arrested. 
The ticker clears its throat. Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r 
The ticker stabs off a line of dots and begins: 
" BOWIE . FIRST . RACE. .MEASLES . FIRST 
. . 13.60 . . AND . . 6.00 . . WHORTLEBERRY . 
SCND . PLACE . 3.80 . . EMMA GOLDMAN, 
THIRD.. TIME . 1.09.4.5. .NON . START . 
PROCRASTINATION . UNCLE TOM'S CABIN " 
A few choice remarks are passed in the privacy 
of the little circle, to just the effect that you would 
suspect. 
A newcomer elbows his way in and says: " What's 

[150] 



FOOTBALL 

the good word? Any score yet? " and some one 
replies: "Yes. The score now stands 206 to o in 
favor of Notre Dame." This grim pleasantry is ex- 
pressive of the sentiment of the group toward new- 
comers. It is each man for himself now. 

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! 

" Here she comes, now! " whispers the man who is 
hanging over the glass news terminal, reading aloud: 
" Yale-Princeton-Game-Second Quarter (Good-night, 
what became of that forward pass in the first 
quarter? ) Yale's - ball - in - mid - field - Hornung - 
takes - ball - around - left - end - making - it - first - 
down - Tinfoil - drops - back - for - a - try - at - a - 
field - goal. (Oh, boy! Come on, now!) " 

" Why the deuce do they try a field goal on the 
first down? " asks a querulous graduate-strategist. 
"Now, what he ought to do is to keep a-plugging 
there at tackle, where he has been going — " 

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! 

" Bet he missed it! " offers some one with vague 
gambling instincts. 

". .INS. NEEDLES. .i>4 • .ZINC. .CON. .^Y, 
..WASHN..THE CENSUS . OFFICE . ESTI- 
MATES . THE CONSUMPTION . OF COTTON 
. WASTE . IN . THE . MFGR . OF . AUTO- 
MBLE . HOODS . AS . 66.991.059 LBS. . IN- 
CLUDING . LINTERS . AND . HULL a 
FIBER.." 

[151] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 

And just then some one comes in from the out- 
side, all fresh and disagreeably cheery, and Wcints 
to know what the score is and if there have been 
many forward passes tried and who is playing 
quarter for Yale, and if any one has got a cigarette. 

It is really just the same sort of program as ob- 
tains in the big college club, only on a small scale. 
They are all watching the same game and they are 
all wishing the same thing and before their respec- 
tive minds' eyes is the picture of the same stadium, 
with the swarm of queen bees and drones clinging 
to its sides. And every time that you, who are one 
of the cold and lucky ones with a real ticket, see a 
back break loose for a long run and hear the explo- 
sion of hoarse shouts that follows, you may count 
sixty and then listen to hear the echo from every big 
city in the country where the old boys have just 
got the news. 



[152] 



XV 
A LITTLE DEBIT IN YOUR TONNEAU 

MOTORISTS, as a class, are not averse to 
public discussion of their troubles. In fact, 
one often wonders how some of them ever get time 
to operate their cars, so tied up do they seem to be 
with these little experience-meetings, at which one 
man tells, with appropriate gestures, how he ran out 
of gas between Springfield and Worcester, while 
another gives a perfect bit of character acting to 
show just how the policeman on the outskirts of 
Trenton behaved. 

But there seems to be one phase of the motorist's 
trials which he never bares to the public. He will 
confide to you just how bad the gasoline was that 
he bought at the country garage; he will make it an 
open secret that he had four blow-outs on the way 
home from the country-club; but of one of his most 
poignant sorrows he never speaks. I refer to the 
guests who snuggle in his tonneau. 

Probably more irritations have arisen from the 
tonneau than from the tires, day in and day out, and 
yet you never hear a man say, " Well, I certainly 

[153I 



1 



OF ALL THINGS ! 

had an unholy crew of camp-followers out with me 
to-day — friends of my wife." Say what you will, 
there is an innate delicacy in the average motorist, 
or such repression could not be. 

Consider the types of tonneau guests. They are 
as generic and fundamental as the spectrum and you 
will find them in Maine and New Mexico at the 
same time. 

There is the first, or major, classification, which 
may be designated as the Financially Paralyzed. 
Persons in this class, on stepping into your machine, 
automatically transfer all their money troubles to 
you. You become, for the duration of the ride, 
whether it be to the next corner or to Palm Beach, 
their financial guardian, and any little purchases 
which are incidental to the trip (such as three meals 
a day) belong to your list of running expenses." 
There seems to be something about the motion of 
the automobile that inhibits their ability to reach 
for their purses, and they become, if you want to 
be poetical about it, like clay in the hands of the 
potter. Whither thou goest they will go; thy check- 
book is their check-book. It is just like the one 
great, big, jolly family — of which you are the father 
and backer. 

Such people always make a great to-do about 
starting off on a trip. You call for them and they 

[154] 



A LITTLE DEBIT 

appear at the window and wave, to signify that they 
see you, and go through motions to show that just 
as soon as Clara has put on her leggings they will 
be down. Soon they appear, swathed in a tremen- 
dous quantity of motor wraps and veils (you can 
usually tell the guests in a car by the number of 
head-veils they wear) and get halfway down the 
walk, when Clara remembers her rain-coat and has 
to swish back upstairs, veils and all. Out again, and 
just as they get wedged into the tonneau, the elderly 
guest wonders if there is time for some one to run 
in again and tell Helma that if the Salvation Army 
man comes for the old magazines she is to tell him 
to come again to-morrow. By the time this message 
is relayed to Helma Garcia one solid half-hour has 
been dissipated from the cream of the morning. 
This does not prevent the guests from remarking, as 
the motor starts, that it certainly is a heavenly day 
and that it couldn't have been better if it had been 
ordered. Knowing the type, you can say to your- 
self that if the day had been ordered you know who 
would have had to give the order and pay the check. 
From that time on, you are the moneyed interest 
behind the venture. Meals at road-houses, toll 
charges, evening papers, hot chocolates at the coun- 
try drug store, hair net for Clara, and, of course, a 
liberal injection of gasoline on the way home, all of 

[155] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

these items and about fourteen others come in your 
bailiwick. The guests have been asked out for a 
ride, and "findings is keepings." If you have 
money enough to run a car, you probably have 
money enough to support them for a day or so. 
That's only fair, isn't it? 




"He always has a quip to snap at you to keep you 
cheered up." 

Under a sub-head (a), in this same category, 
come the guests who are stricken with rigor mortis 
when there are any repairs to be made about the 
machine. Male offenders in this line are, of course, 
the only ones that can be dealt with here; putting 
on a tire is no job for women and children. But the 
man who is the life of the party in the tonneau 
throughout the trip, who thinks nothing of climbing 
all over the back of the car in imitation of a Roman 
charioteer, will suddenly become an advocate of the 
basic eight-hour working day which began just eight 

[156] 



A LITTLE DEBIT 

hours before, whenever there is a man's work to be 
done on one of the tires. He will watch you while 
you work, and always has a good word to say or a 
quip to snap at you to keep you cheered up, but 
when it comes to taking off his coat and lending a 
hand at the jack he is an Oriental incense-holder on 
the guest-room mantel. He admits in no uncertain 
tones, that he is a perfect dub when it comes to 
handling machinery and that he is more apt to be 
in the way at a time like this than not. And maybe 
he is right, after all. 

We next come to the class of tonneau-freight who 
are great believers in what Professor Muensterberg 
called " Auto-Suggestion." These people, although 
not seated in the driver's seat, have their own ideas 
on driving and spare no pains to put their theories 
in the form of suggestions. In justice to the Great 
Army of the Unemployed known as " guests " it 
must be admitted that a large percentage of these 
suggestions emanate from some member of the own- 
er's family and not from outsiders. It is very often 
Mrs. Wife who is off-side in this play, but as she is 
usually in the tonneau, she comes under the same 
classification. 

There are various ways of framing suggestions to 
the driver from the back seat. They are all equally 
annoying. Among the best are: 

[157] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

" For heaven's sake, George, turn in a little. 

There is a car behind that wants to pass us." 
" Look out where you're going, Stan." 
" Henry, if you don't slow down I'm going to get 

out and take the train back home." 




" If this is accompanied with a clutching gesture at the driver's 
arm, it is sure to throw him into a good humor." 



If this is accompanied by a clutching gesture at 
the driver's arm it is sure to throw him into a good 
humor for the rest of the trip, so that a good time 
will be had by all present. 

Although guests are not so prone to make sugges- 
tions on the running of the car as are those who, 
through the safety of family connection, may do so 
without fear of bodily assault from the driver, never- 
theless, a guest may, according to the code, lean 
over the back of the seat and slip little hints as to 
the route. Especially if one of them be entrusted 
with a Blue Book does this form of auto-suggestion 
become chronic. 

" It says here that we should have taken that road 

[158] 



A LITTLE DEBIT 

to the right back there by the Soldiers' Monument," 
informs the reader over your shoulder. Or — 

" Somehow this doesn't seem like the right road. 
Personally, I think that we ought to turn around 
and go back to the cross-roads." 

If it is Mrs. Wife in the tonneau who has her own 
ideas on the route, you might as well give in at her 
first suggestion, for the risk that she is right is too 
great to run. If she says that she would advise tak- 
ing the lane that runs around behind that school- 
house, take it. Then, if it turns out to be a blind 
alley, you have the satisfaction of saying nothing, 
very eloquently and effectively. But if you refuse 
to take her suggestion, and your road turns out to 
be even halfway wrongs you might as well turn the 
wheel over to your little son and go South for the 
winter, for you will never hear the ultimate cry of 
triumph. Your season will practically be ruined. I 
can quote verbatim from the last affair of this kind: 

(Voice from the tonneau) : " Albert, I think we 
ought to have taken the road at the left." 

" No, we hadn't." 

" I'm sure of it. I saw a sign which said: ^ Pax- 
ton ' on it." 

" No, you didn't." 

" Well, you wait and see." 

" I'm waiting." 

[159] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

There is a silence for ten minutes, while the car 
jounces along a road which gets narrower and 
rockier. 

(Voice from the tonneau) : " I suppose you think 
this is the way to Paxton? " 

" I certainly do,^' 

" Oh, you make me sick! " 

Silence and jounces. 

Sudden stop as the road ends at a silo. 

"I beg your pardon [addressed to a rustic], 
which is the road to Paxton? " 

" Paxton? " 

" Yes." 

" The road to Paxton? " 

" Yes." 

" Well, you go back over the rud you just come 
over, about three mile, till you come to a rud turnin' 
off to the right with a sign which says ^ Paxton.' " 

(Voice from the tonneau, beginning at this point 
and continuing all of the way back, all the rest of 
the day and night, and until snow falls) : " There! 
what did I tell you? But, oh no, you know it all. 
Didn't I tell you " — etc., etc. 

On the whole, it would seem that the artists who 
draw the automobile advertisements make a mistake 
in drawing the tonneau so roomy and so full of peo- 
ple. There should be no tonneau. 

[i6o] 



XVI 



A ROMANCE IN ENCYCLOPEDIA LAND 

Written After Three Hours' Browsing in a New 
Britannica Set 

PICTURE to yourself an early spring afternoon 
along the banks of the river Aa, which, rising 
in the Teutoburger Wald, joins the Werre at Her- 

ford and is navigable as far as St. Omer. 

Branching bryophytn spread their fiat, dor si- 
ventral bodies, closely applied to the sub-stratum on 
which they grew, and leafy carophyllaceae twined 
their sepals in prodigal profusion, lending a touch of 
color to the scene. It was 
clear that nature was in 
preparation for her estiva- '^, 
tion. 

But it was not this 
which attracted the eye of 
the young man who, walk- 
ing along the phonolithic 
formation of the river- 
bank, was playing softly to himself on a double cur- 
tail, or converted bass-pommer, an octave below the 

[i6i] 




" Was playing softly to 
himself on a double curtail 
or converted bass-pommer." 



I 



OF ALL THINGS! 

single curtail and therefore identical in pitch and 
construction with the early fagotto in C. 

His mind was on other things. 

He was evidently of Melanochronic extraction, 
with the pentagonal facial angle and strong obital 
ridges, l)ut he combined with this the fine lines of a 
full-blooded native of Coll, where, indeed, he was 
born,, seven miles west of Caliach Point, in Mull, 
and in full view of the rugged gneiss. 

As he swung along, there throbbed again and 
again through his brain the beautiful opening para- 
graph of Frantisek Palacky's (1798-1876) ^^ Zur 
bohmischen Geschichtschreibung" (Prague, 1871), 
written just after the author had refused a portfolio 
in the Filler sdorf Cabinet and had also declined to 
take part in the preliminary diet at Kromerice. 

" If he could believe such things, why can not 
I? " murmured the young man, and crushed a 
ginkgo beneath his feet. Young men are often so. 
It is due to the elaterium of spring. 

" By Ereshkigal," he swore softly to himself, " I'll 
do it." 

No sooner had he spoken than he came suddenly 
out of the tangle of gymnosperms through whose 
leaves, needle-like and destitute of oil-glands as they 
were, he had been making his way, and emerged to a 
full view of the broad sweep of the Lake of Zug, 

[162] 



IN ENCYCLOPEDIA LAND 



just where the Lorze enters at its northern extremity 
and one and a quarter miles east of where it issues 
again to pursue its course toward the Reuss. Zug, 
at this point, is 1,368 feet above sea-level, and 
boasted its first steamer in 1852. 

" Well," he sighed, as he gazed upon the broad 
area of subsidence, " if I 
were now an exarch, whose 
dignity was, at one time, in- 
termediate between the Pa- 
triarchal and the Metropoli- 
tan and from whose name 
has come that of the politico- 
religious party, the Exarch- 
ists, I should not be here 
day-dreaming. I should be 
far away in Footscray, a city 
of Bourke County, Victoria, 
Australia, pop. (1901) 18,301." 

And as he said this his eyes filled with tears, and 
under his skin, brown as fustic, there spread a faint 
flush, such as is often formed by citrocyde, or by 
pyrochloric acid when acting on uncured leather. 

Far down in the valley the natives were celebrat- 
ing the birthday of Gambrinus, a mythical Flemish 
king who is credited with the first brewing of beer. 
The sound of their voices set in motion longitudinal 

[163] 




" He came suddenly out 

of the tangle of gymno- 

sperms." 



OF ALL THINGS! 






sound waves, and these, traveling through the sur- 
rounding medium, met the surface separating two 
media and were in part reflected, traveling back 
from the surface into the first medium again with 
the velocity with which they approached it, as de- 
picted in Fig. 10. This caused the echo for which 
the Lake of Zug is justly famous. 

The twilight began to deepen and from far above 
came the twinkling signals of, first, Bootes, then 
Coma Berenices, followed, awhile later, by Ursa 
Major and her little brother, Ursa Minor. 

" The stars are clear to-night," he sighed. " I 
wonder if they are visible from the dacite elevation 
on which SHE lives." 

His was an untrained mind. His only school had 
been the Eleatic School, the contention of which was 
that the true explanation of things lies in the con- 
ception of a universal unity of being, or the All-ness 
of One. 

But he knew what he liked. 

In the calm light of the stars he felt as if a uban 
had been lifted from his heart, 5 ubans being equal 
to I quat, 6 quats to i ammat and 120 ammats to 

I SOS. 

He was free again. 

Turning, he walked swiftly down into the valley, 
passing returning peasants with their baa-poots, and 

[164] 



IN ENCYCLOPEDIA LAND 




" She turned like a fright- 
ened aadvark." (Male, 
greatly reduced.) 



soon came in sight of the 
shining lamps of the small 
but carefully built pooroos 
which lined the road. 

Reaching the corner he 
saw the village epi peering 
over the tree-tops, and 
swarms of cicada, with the 
toothed famoras of their an- 
terior legs mingling in a 
so 



sleepy drone, like 
many cichlids. It was all 
very home-like to the wan- 
derer. 

Suddenly there ap- 
peared on a neighboring 
eminence a party of gui- 
sards, such as, during the 
Saturnalia, and from the 
Nativity till the Epiphany 
were accustomed to dis- 
port themselves in odd 
costumes; all clad in 
clouting, and evidently re- 
turning from taking part 
in the celebration. 

As they drew nearer, " Barnaby Bema^r^Weenix." 

[165] 




I 



OF ALL THINGS! 

our hero noticed a young woman in the front rank 
who was playing folk-songs on a cromorne with a 
double-reed mouth-piece enclosed in an air-reservoir. 

In spite of the detritus 
wrought by the festival, 
there was something fa- 
miliar about the buccina- 
tor of her face and her 
little mannerism of elevat- 
ing her second phalanx. 
It struck him like the flash 
of a cloud highly charged 
by the coalescence of 
drops of vapor. He ap- 
proached her, tenderly, 
reverently. 

" Lange, Anne Fran- 
goise Elizabeth," he said, 
" I know you. You are 
a French actress, born in 
Genoa on the seventeenth of September, 1772, and 
you made your first appearance on the stage in 
UEcossaise in 1788. Your talent and your beauty 
gave you an enormous success in Pamela. It has 
taken me years to find you, but now we are united 
at last." 

The girl turned like a frightened aard-vark, still 

[166] 




"Why not to Wem?" 

(From a contemporaneous 

print.) 



r 



IN ENCYCLOPEDIA LAND 

holding the cromorne in her hand. Then she smiled. 

"Weenix, Barnaby Bernard (1777-1829)," she 
said very slowly, " you started business as a pub- 
lisher in London about 1797." 

They looked at each other for a moment in silence. 
He was the first to speak. 

" Miss Lange, Anne," he said, " let us go together 
to Lar — and be happy there — happy as two ais, or 
three-toed South American sloths." 

She lowered her eyes. 

"I will go with you Mr. Weenix-Barney," she 
said, " to the ends of the earth. But why to Lar? 
Why not to Wem? " 

" Because," said the young man, " Lar is the capi- 
tal of Laristan, in 27 degrees, 30 minutes N., 180 
miles from Shiraz, and contains an old bazaar con- 
sisting of four arcades each 180 feet long." 

Their eyes met, and she placed her hands in his. 

And, from the woods, came the mellow whinnying 
of a herd of vip, the wool of which is highly valued 
for weaving. 



[167] 



^ 



XVII 

THE PASSING OF THE ORTHODOX 
PARADOX 

WHATEVER irreparable harm may have been 
done to Society by the recent epidemic of 
crook, sex and other dialect plays, one great allevia- 
tion has resulted. They have driven up-stage, for 
the time being, the characters who exist on tea and 
repartee in '' The drawing-room of Sir Arthur 
Peaversham's town house, Grosvenor Square. Time: 
late Autumn.'^ 

A person in a crook play may have talked under- 
world patois which no self-respecting criminal would 
have allowed himself to utter, but he did not sit on 
a divan and evolve abnormal bons mots with each 
and every breath. The misguided and misinformed 
daughter in the Self and Sex Play may have lisped 
words which only an interne should hear, but she 
did not offer a succession of brilliant but meaning- 
less paradoxes as a substitute for real conversation. 

Continuously snappy back-talk is now encoun- 
tered chiefly in such acts as those of " Cooney & 
LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team." 

[i68] 



THE ORTHODOX PARADOX 

And even they manage to scrape along without the 
paradoxes. 

But there was a time, beginning with the Oscar 
Wilde era, when no unprotected thought was safe. 




" Snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts as 
* Cooney and Le Blanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team.' " 

It might be seized at any moment by an English 
Duke or a Lady Agatha and strangled to death. 
Even the butlers in the late 'eighties were wits, and 
served epigrams with cucumber sandwiches; and a 
person entering one of these drawing-rooms and 
talking in connected sentences — easily understood 
by everybody — each with one subject, predicate and 
meaning, would have been looked upon as a high 
class moron. One might as well have gone to a din- 

[169.] 



m 



OF ALL THINGS! 

ner at LadytCoventry's without one's collar, as with- 
out one's kit of trained paradoxes. 
A late Autumn afternoon in one of these semi- 




"The butlers served epigrams with the cucumber sandwiches." 

Oscar Wilde plays, for instance, would run some- 
thing like this: 



Scene — The Octagon Room in Lord Raymond 
Eaveston's Manor House in Stropshire. 

Lady Eaveston and Sir Thomas Waffleton 
are discovered, arranging red flowers in a vase. 

Sir T.: I detest red flowers; they are so yellow. 

Lady E.: What a cynic you are, Sir Thomas. I 
really must not listen to you or I shall hear some- 
thing that you say. 

[170] 



THE ORTHODOX PARADOX 

Sir T.: Not at all, my dear Lady Eaveston. I 
detest people who listen closely; they are so inat- 
tentive. 

Lady E.: Pray do not be analytical, my dear Sir 
Thomas. When people are extremely analytical 
with me I am sure that they are superficial, and, to 
me, nothing is more abominable than superficiality, 
unless perhaps it is, an intolerable degree of thor- 
oughness. 

(Enter Meadows, the Butler) 

Meadows (announcing): Sir Mortimer Longley 
and Mrs. Wrennington, — a most remarkable couple, 
—I may say in announcing them, — in that there is 
nothing at all remarkable about them. 

(Enter Sir Mortimer and Mrs, Wrennington) 

Mrs. W.: So sorry to be late, dear Lady Eaves- 
ton. But it is so easy to be on time that I always 
make it a point to be late. It lends poise, and poise 
is a charming quality for any woman to have, am I 
not right, Sir Thomas? 

Sir T.: You are always right, my dear Mrs. 
Wrennington, and never more so than now, for I 
know of no more attractive attribute than poise, un- 
less perhaps it be embarrassment. 

[171] 



OF ALL THINGS 1 

Lady E.: What horrid cynics you men are! 
Really, Sir Thomas, one might think, from your 
sophisticated remarks that you had been brought 
up in the country and had seen nothing of life. 

Sir T. : And so I have been, my dear Lady Eaves- 
ton. To my mind, London is nothing but the coun- 
try, and certainly Stropshire is nothing but a 
metropolis. The difference is, that when one is in 
town, one lives with others, and when one is in the 
country, others live with one. And both plans are 
abominable. 

Mrs. W.: What a horrid combination! I hate 
horrid combinations; they always turn out to be so 
extremely pleasant. 

{Enter Meadows) 

Meadows {announcing): Sir Roland Pinsham- 
ton; Viscount Lemingham; Countess Trotski and 
Mr. Peters. In announcing these parties I cannot 
refrain from remarking that it has always been my 
opinion that a man who intends to get married 
should either know something or nothing, preferably 
both. 

{Exit Meadows) 

Countess T.: So sorry to be late, my dear Lady 
Eaveston. It was charmingly tolerant of you to 
have us. 

[172] 



THE ORTHODOX PARADOX 

Lady E.: Invitations are never tolerant, my dear 
Countess; acceptances always are. But do tell me, 
how is your husband, the Count, — or perhaps he is 
no longer your husband. One never knows these 
days whether a man is his wife^s husband or whether 
she is simply his wife. 

Countess T. (lighting a cigarette) : Really, Lady 
Eaveston, you grow more and more interesting. I 
detest interesting people; they are so hopelessly un- 
interesting. It is like beautiful people — who are 
usually so singularly unbeautiful. Has not that been 
your experience, Sir Mortimer? 

Sir M. : May I have the pleasure of escorting you 
to the music-room, Mrs. Wrennington? 

(Exeunt omnes to music-room for dinner) 
Curtain. 

It is from this that we have, in a measure, been 
delivered by the court-room scenes, and all the 
medical dramas. But the paradox still remains in- 
trenched in English writing behind Mr. G. K. Ches- 
terton, and he may be considered, by literary tac- 
ticians, as considerable stronghold. 

Here again we find our commonplaces shaken up 
until they emerge in what looks like a new and tre- 
mendously imposing shape, and all of them osten- 
sibly proving the opposite of what we have always 

[173] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

understood. If we do not quite catch the precise 
meaning at first reading, we lay it to our imperfect 
perception and try to do better on the next one. It 
seldom occurs to us that it really may have no mean- 
ing at all and never was intended to have any, any 
more than the act of hanging by your feet from 
parallel bars has any further significance than that 
you can manage to do it. 

So, before retiring to the privacy of our personal 
couches, let us thank an all wise Providence, that 
the drama-paradox has passed away. 



[174] 



XVIII 

SHAKESPEARE EXPLAINED 

Carrying on the System of Footnotes to a Silly 

Extreme 

PERICLES 

Act II. Scene 3 

Enter first Lady-in-W aiting {Flourish,^ Haut- 
boys ^ and ^ torches *). 

First Lady-in-W aiting— WhdX^ ho! ' Where*' 
is ^ the ® music? ^° 

notes 
I. Flourish: The stage direction here is obscure. 
Clarke claims it should read " flarish/' thus chang- 
ing the meaning of the passage to " flarish " (that 
is, the King's), but most authorities have agreed 
that it should remain "flourish," suppl)dng the 
predicate which is to be flourished. There was at 
this time a custom in the countryside of England 
to flourish a mop as a signal to the passing vender 
of berries, signif5dng that in that particular house- 
hold there was a consumer-demand for berries, and 

[I7S] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

this may have been meant m this instance. That 
Shakespeare was cognizant of this custom of flour- ^ 
ishing the mop for berries is shown in a similar, 
passage in the second part of King Henry IV, where 




" Might be one of the hautboys bearing a box 
of " trognies " for the actors to suck. 

he has the Third Page enter and say, " Flourish." 
Cf . also Hamlet, IV, 7 : 4. 

2. Hautboys y from the French hautj meaning 
" high " and the Eng. boys, meaning " boys." The 
word here is doubtless used in the sense of " high 
boys," indicating either that Shakespeare intended 

[176] 



SHAKESPEARE EXPLAINED 

to convey the idea of spiritual distress on the part 
of the First Lady-in- Waiting or that he did not. Of 
this Rolfe says: " Here we have one of the chief in- 
dications of Shakespeare's knowledge of human na- 
ture, his remarkable insight into the petty foibles 
of this work-a-day world." Cf. T. N. 4: 6, " Mine 
eye hath play'd the painter, and hath stelPd thy 
beauty's form in table of my heart." 

3. and, A favorite conjunctive of Shakespeare's 
in referring to the need for a more adequate navy 
for England. Tauchnitz claims that it should be 
pronounced " und," stressing the anti-penult. This 
interpretation, however, has found disfavor among 
most commentators because of its limited signifi- 
cance. We find the same conjunctive in A. W. T. E. 
W. 6: 7, " Steel-boned, unyielding and uncomplying 
virtue," and here there can be no doubt that Shake- 
speare meant that if the King should consent to 
the marriage of his daughter the excuse of Stephano, 
offered in Act 2, would carry no weight. 

4. Torches, The interpolation of some foolish 
player and never the work of Shakespeare (Warb.). 
The critics of the last century have disputed whether 
or not this has been misspelled in the original, and 
should read " trochies " or " troches." This might 
well be since the introduction of tobacco into Eng- 
land at this time had wrought havoc with the speak- 

[177] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

ing voices of the players, and we might well imagine: 
that at the entrance of the First Lady-in- Waiting J 
there might be perhaps one of the hautboys men- 
tioned in the preceding passage bearing a box of 
troches or " trognies " for the actors to suck. Of 
this entrance Clarke remarks: "The noble mixture 
of spirited firmness and womanly modesty, fine sense 
and true humility, clear sagacity and absence of con- 
ceit, passionate warmth and sensitive delicacy, gen- 
erous love and self-diffidence with which Shakespeare | 
has endowed this First Lady-in-Waiting renders 
her in our eyes one of the most admirable of his 
female characters." Cf. M. S. N. D. 8: 9, "That 
solder'st close impossibilities and mak'st them kiss." 

5. What—Wh2it 

6. Ho! In conjunction with the preceding word 
doubtless means " What ho! " changed by Clarke to 
"What hoo! " In the original MS. it reads "What 
hi! " but this has been accredited to the tendency 
of the time to write " What hi " when " what ho " 
was meant. Techner alone maintains that it should 
read " What humpf ! " Cf. Ham. 5: o, " High-ho! " 

7. Where. The reading of the folio, retained by 
Johnson, the Cambridge editors and others, but it 
is not impossible that Shakespeare wrote "why," 
as Pope and others give it. This would make the 
passage read " Why the music?" instead of " Where 

[178] 



SHAKESPEARE EXPLAINED 

is the music? " and would be a much more probable 
interpretation in view of the music of that time. Cf . 
George Ade. Fable No. 15, "Why the gunny- 
sack? " 

8. is — is not. That is, would not be. 

9. the. Cf.Ham.4:6. M.S.N. 0.3:5. A. W. 
T. E. W. 2 : 6. T. N. i : 3 and Macbeth 3:1," that 
knits up the raveled sleeves of care." 

10. music. Explained by Malone as "the art of 
making music " or " music that is made." If it has 
but one of these meanings we are inclined to think 
it is the first; and this seems to be favored by what 
precedes, " the music! " Cf. M. of V. 4: 2, " The 
man that hath no music in himself." 

The meaning of the whole passage seems to be 
that the First Lady-in-Waiting has entered, con- 
comitant with a flourish, hautboys and torches and 
says, " What ho! Where is the music? " 



[179] 



XIX 

THE SCIENTIFIC SCENARIO 

SOONER or later some one is going to come out 
and say that the movies are too low-brow. I 
can just see it coming. Maybe some one has said 
it already, without its having been brought to my 
attention, as I have been very busy for the past 
two weeks on my yearly accounts (my accounts for 
the year 1920, I mean. What with one thing and 
another, I am a bit behind in my budget S3^tem). 

And whenever this denouncement of the movies 
takes place, the first thing that is going to be spe- 
cifically criticized is the type of story which is now 
utilized for scenarios. How can a nation hope to 
inject any culture in the minds of its people if it 
feeds them with moving-picture stories dealing with 
elemental emotions like love, hate, and a passion 
for evening-dress? Scenarios to-day have no cul- 
tural background. That's the trouble with them. 
They have no cultural background. 

Now, if we are to make the movies count for 
anything in the mental development of our people, 
we must build them of sterner stuff. We must make 
them from stories and books which are of the mind 

[180] 



THE SCIENTIFIC SCENARIO 

rather than of the body. The action should be 
cerebral, rather than physical, and instead of thrill- 
ing at the sight of two horsemen galloping along a 
cliff, we should be given the opportunity of seeing 
two opposing minds doing a rough-and-tumble on 
the edge of a nice problem in Dialectics or Meta- 
physics. 

I would suggest as a book, from which a pretty 
little scenario might be made, "The Education of 
Henry Adams." This volume has had a remarkable 
success during the past year among the highly edu- 
cated classes. Public library records show that more 
people have lied about having read it than any 
other book in a decade. It contains five hundred 
pages of mental masochism, in which the author tor- 
tures himself for not getting anywhere in his brain 
processes. He just simply can't seem to get any 
further than the evolution of an elementary Dy- 
namic Theory of History or a dilettante dabbling 
with a Law of Acceleration. And he came of a bright 
family, too. 

I don't go in much for scenario writing myself, 
but I am willing to help along the cause of better 
moving-pictures by offering herewith an outline for 
a six-reel feature entitled "THE EDUCATION 
OF HENRY ADAMS; or WHY MINDS GO 
WRONG." 

[i8i] 



m 



OF ALL THINGS I 

CAST OF CHARACTERS 

Henry Adams. 
Left Frontal Brain Lobe, 
Right Frontal Brain Lobe, 
Manservant, 

Crowd of Villagers, Reflexes, Complexes, 
and Mental Processes, 

The first scene is, according to the decorated cap- 
tion: " In the Harvard College Study of Henry 
Adams, Scion of an Old New England Family, 
THE Night Before the Big Cerebral Function 
OF His Young Manhood." 

Henry Adams, a Junior, is discovered sitting at his 
desk in his room in Holworthy Hall. He has a note- 
book on the Glacial Period and Palaeontology open 
in front of him. He is thinking of his Education. 
(Flash'back showing courses taken since Freshman 
year. Pianist plays " Carry Me Back to Old Vir- 
ginieJ') He bites his under lip and turns a page of 
his notes. 

Caption: " Does Transcendentalism Hold the 
Key? ... I Wonder . . ." 

{Fade-out showing him biting his upper lip, still 
thinking.) 

The second scene is laid in Rome. 

Caption: "Here, After a Year's Wandering 

[182] 



THE SCIENTIFIC SCENARIO 

Through the Happy, Smiling Lands of Europe, 
Comes Young Henry Adams in His Search for 
Education. And Now, in the Shadow of An- 




** Thrilling moment in * The Education of Henry Adams/ " 



ciENT Rome, He Finds Peace, but Not That 
Peace for Which He Sought." 

He is discovered sitting on a rock among the ruins 
of the Capitol, thinking. He tosses a pebble from 
one hand to another and scowls. The shadows 
deepen, and he rises, passing his hand across his 
brow. {Flash-hack showing the Latin verbs which 
govern the dative case. Pianist plays: '' The March 
of the Jolly Grenadier s.^^) 

He walks slowly to the Museo Nazionale, where 

[183] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

he stands pondering before a statue of Venus, think- 
ing about Roman art and history — and about his 
Education. 

Caption: "Can All This Be Fitted into a 
Time-Sequence? Can Rienzi, Garibaldi, Ti- 
berius Gracchus, Aurelian, Any of These Fa- 
mous Names of Rome, Be Adapted to a Sys- 
tematic Scheme of Evolution? No, No ... a 
Thousand Times, No! " 

He sinks down on a rock and weeps bitterly. 

The next scene is in England and our hero is found 
sitting at a desk in his study in London. He is gaz- 
ing into space — thinking. 

Caption: "And so. All Through the Long, 
Weary Summer, Henry Adams Sat, Head in 
Hand, Wondering if Darwin Was Right. To 
Him the Glacial Epoch Seemed Like a Yawn- 
ing Chasm Between a Uniformitarian World 
AND Himself. If the Glacial Period Were Uni- 
formity, What Was Catastrophe? . . . And to 
This Question, the Cool of the Summer^s 
Evening in Shropshire Brought no Relief." 

He rises slowly and goes to the book-shelves, from 
which he draws a copy of " The Origin of Species." 
Placing it before him on the desk he turns the pages 
slowly until he comes to one which holds his atten- 
tion. 

[184] 



THE SCIENTIFIC SCENARIO 

Close-up of page 126, on which is read: "It is 
notorious that specific characters are more variable 
than generic. . . . 

Feet 
Palaezoic strata (not including igneous 

beds) 57,154 

Secondary strata 13,190 

Tertiary strata 2,400 " 

The book drops to the floor from his nerveless 
fingers and he buries his head in his arms, sobbing. 
(Music: " When You and I Were Young, Maggie.") 

" Twenty Years After . . . Henry Adams Is 
NO Longer Young, but in His Heart Lies Still 
THE Hunger for Education. Going Forward, 
Ever Forward, He Realizes as Never Before 
That Without Thought in the Unit, There 
Can Be no Unity. Thought Alone Is Form. 
Mind and Unity Flourish or Perish Together." 

(Allegorical flash-back showing Mind and Unity 
perishing together,) 

The hero is now seen seated in a Morris chair in 
Washington, touching his finger-tips together in a 
ruminative manner. Arising slowly, he goes to the 
window and looks out over Lafayette Square. Then 
he lights a cigar and goes back to his chair. He 

[185] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

is pondering and attempting to determine when, be- 
tween 3000 B.C. and 1000 A.D. the momentum of Eu- 
rope was greatest, as exemplified in mathematics by 
such masters as Archimedes, Aristarchus, Ptolemy 
and Euclid. 

{Flash-back showing the mathematical theories 
of Archimedes y Aristarchus , Ptolemy and Euclid, 
Music: " Old Ireland Shall Be Free,") 

Rising from his chair again, he paces the floor, 
clenching his hands behind his back in mute fury. 

Caption: "God Have Mercy on Me! I Can 
See It All — I Have Never Been Educated! '* 

Next Week: Bert Lytell in 

" Sartor Resartus " 

A Smashing Six-Reel Feature 

BY Tom Carlyle 



[186] 



XX 

THE MOST POPULAR BOOK OF THE 
MONTH 

New York City (including all Boroughs) Telephone 
Directory — ^N. Y. Telephone Co., N. Y. 1920. 8vo. 
1208 pp. 

IN picking up this new edition of a popular fa- 
vorite, the reviewer finds himself confronted by 
a nice problem in literary ethics. The reader must 
guess what it is. 

There may be said to be two classes of people in 
the world; those who constantly divide the people 
of the world into two classes, and those who do not. 
Both classes are extremely unpleasant to meet so- 
cially, leaving practically no one in the world whom 
one cares very much to know. This feeling is made 
poignant, to the point of becoming an obsession, by 
a careful reading of the present volume. 

We are herein presented to some five hundred 
thousand characters, each one deftly drawn in a 
line or two of agate type, each one standing out 
from the rest in bold relief. It is hard to tell which 
one is the most lovable. In one mood we should 

[187] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

say W. S, Custard of Minnieford Ave. In another, 
more susceptible frame of mind, we should stand by 
the character who opens the book and who first in- 
troduces us into this Kingdom of Make-Believe — 




" The most popular book on earth." 

Mr. V. Aagaard, the old " Impt. & Expt." How one 
seems to see him, impting and expting all the hot 
summer day through, year in and year out, always 
heading the list, but always modest and imassum- 
ing, always with a kindly word and a smile for 
passers-by on Broadway! 

It is perhaps inaccurate to say that V. Aagaard 
introduces us to the book. He is the first flesh-and- 
blood human being with whom the reader comes 
in contact, but the initial place in the line should 

[i88] 



THE MOST POPULAR BOOK 

technically go to the A. & A. A. Excelsior Co. Hav- 
ing given credit where credit is due, however, let 
us express our personal opinion that this name is a 
mere trick, designed to crowd out all other com- 
petitors in the field for the honor of being in the 
premiere position, for it must be obvious to any 
one with any perception at all that the name doesn't 
make sense. No firm could be named the A. & 
A. A. Co., and the author of the telephone directory 
might better have saved his jokes until the body 
of the book. After all, Gelett Burgess does that sort 
of thing much better than any one else could hope 
to. 

But, beginning with V. Aagaard and continuing 
through to Mrs, L. Zyjers of Yettman Ave., the 
reader is constantly aware of the fact that here are 
real people, living in a real city, and that they 
represent a problem which must be faced. 

Sharp as we find the character etching in the 
book, the action, written and implied, is even more 
remarkable. Let us, for instance, take Mr. Saml 
Dreylinger, whose business is " Furn Reprg," or 
Peter Shalijian, who does " pmphlt bindg." Into 
whose experience do these descriptions not fit? The 
author need only mention a man bindg pmphlts to 
bring back a flood of memories to each and every 
one of us — perhaps our old home town in New Eng- 

[189] 



m 



OF ALL THINGS! 

land where bindg pmphlts was almost a rite dur- 
ing the long winter months, as well as a social 
function of no mean proportions. It is the ability 
to suggest, to insinuate, these automatic memories 
on the part of the reader without the use of extra 
words that makes the author of this work so worthy 
of the name of craftsman in the literary annals of 
the day. 

Perhaps most deft of all is the little picture that 
is made of Louise Winkler, who is the village " sclp 
spclst." One does not have to know much medieval 
history to remember the position that the sclp spclst 
used to hold in the community during the Wars of 
the Roses. Or during Shay's Rebellion, for that mat- 
ter. In those days, to be a sclp spclst was as impor- 
tant a post as that of " clb bdg stbls " (now done 
for New York City by Mr. Graham). People came 
from miles around to consult with the local sclp 
spclst on matters pertaining not only to sclps but 
to knt gds and wr whls, both of which departments 
of our daily life have now been delegated to sepa- 
rate agencies. Then gradually, with the growth of 
the trade guild movement, there came the Era of 
Specialization in Industry, and the high offices of 
the sclp spclst were dissipated among other trades, 
until only that coming strictly under the head of 
sclp speclzng remained. To this estate has Miss 

[190] 



r 



THE MOST POPULAR BOOK 

Winkler come, and in that part of the book which 
deals with her and her work, we have, as it were, 
a little epic on the mutability of human endeavor. 
It is all too short, however, and we are soon there- 
after plunged into the dreary round of expting and 
impting, this time through a character called /, 
WuhbCy who is interesting only in so far as he is 
associated with M. Wruhel and A. N. Wubbenhorst, 
all of whom come together at the bottom of the 
column. 

The plot, in spite of whatever virtues may accrue 
to it from the acid delineation of the characters and 
the vivid action pictures, is the weakest part of 
the work. It lacks coherence. It lacks stability. 

Perhaps this is because of the nature of the book 
itself. Perhaps it is because the author knew too 
well his Dunsany. Or his Wells. Or his Bradstreet. 
But it is the opinion of the present reviewer that 
the weakness of plot is due to the great number 
of characters which clutter up the pages. The Rus- 
sian school is responsible for this. We see here the 
logical result of a sedulous aping of those writers 
such as Tolstoi, Andreief, Turgenief, Dostoiefsky, 
or even Pushkin, whose metier it was to fill the pages 
of their books with an inordinate number of char- 
acters, many of whom the reader was to encounter 
but once, let us say, on the Nevsky Prospekt or in 

[191] 



1 

OF ALL THINGS! | 

the Smolny Institute, but all of whom added their 
peculiar names (we believe that we will not offend 
when we refer to Russian names as " peculiar ") to 
the general confusion of the whole. 

In practice, the book is not flawless. There are 
five hundred thousand names, each with a corre- 
sponding telephone number. But, through some 
error in editing, the numbers are all wrong. Proof 
of this may be had by the simple expedient of call- 
ing up any one of the subscribers, using the number 
assigned by the author to that name. (Any name 
will do — let us say Nicholas Wimpie-Hdirlem 2 131.) 
If the call is put in bright and early in the morning, 
the report will come over the wire just as the lights 
are going on for evening of the same day that " Har- 
lem 2 13 1 does not answer." The other numbers 
are invariably equally unproductive of results. The 
conclusion is obvious. 

Aside from this point the book is a success. 



[192] 



f 



XXI 

CHRISTMAS AFTERNOON 
Done in the Manner, if Not the Spirit, of Dickens 

WHAT an afternoon I Mr. Gummidge said 
that, in his estimation, there never had been 
such an afternoon since the world began, a senti- 
ment which was heartily endorsed by Mrs. Gum- 
midge and all the little Gummidges, not to mention 
the relatives who had come over from Jersey for 
the day. 

In the first place, there was the ennui. And such 
ennui as it was ! A heavy, overpowering ennui, such 
as results from a participation in eight courses of 
steaming, gravied food, topping off with salted nuts 
which the little old spinster Gummidge from Oak 
Hill said she never knew when to stop eating — 
and true enough she didn't — a dragging, devitalizing 
ennui, which left its victims strewn about the living- 
room in various attitudes of prostration suggestive 
of those of the petrified occupants in a newly un- 
earthed Pompeiian dwelling; an ennui which car- 
ried with it a retinue of yawns, snarls and thinly 

[193] 



m 



OF ALL THINGS 1 




"What an afternoon 1" 



[194] 



CHRISTMAS AFTERNOON 

veiled insults, and which ended in ruptures in the 
clan spirit serious enough to last throughout the 
glad new year. 

Then there were the toys! Three and a quarter 
dozen toys to be divided among seven children. 
Surely enough, you or I might say, to satisfy the 
little tots. But that would be because we didn't 
know the tots. In came Baby Lester Gummidge, 
Lillian's boy, dragging an electric grain-elevator 
which happened to be the only toy in the entire 
collection which appealed to little Norman, five- 
year-old son of Luther, who lived in Rahway. In 
came curly-headed Effie in frantic and throaty dis- 
putation with Arthur, Jr., over the possession of an 
articulated zebra. In came Everett, bearing a me- 
chanical negro which would no longer dance, owing 
to a previous forcible feeding by the baby of a 
marshmallow into its only available aperture. In 
came Fonlansbee, teeth buried in the hand of little 
Ormond, which bore a popular but battered remnant 
of what had once been the proud false-bosom of a 
hussar's uniform. In they all came, one after an- 
other, some crying, some snapping, some pulling, 
some pushing — all appealing to their respective par- 
ents for aid in their intra-mural warfare. 

And the cigar smoke! Mrs. Gummidge said that 
she didn't mind the smoke from a good cigarette, 

[195] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

but would they mind if she opened the windows 
for just a minute in order to clear the room of 
the heavy aroma of used cigars? Mr. Gummidge 
stoutly maintained that they were good cigars. His 
brother, George Gummidge, said that he, likewise, 
would say that they were. At which colloquial sally 
both the Gummidge brothers laughed testily, thereby 
breaking the laughter record for the afternoon. 

Aunt Libbie, who lived with George, remarked 
from the dark corner of the room that it seemed 
just like Sunday to her. An amendment was of- 
fered to this statement by the cousin, who was in 
the insurance business, stating that it was worse 
than Sunday. Murmur ings indicative of as hearty 
agreement with this sentiment as their lethargy 
would allow came from the other members of the 
family circle, causing Mr. Gummidge to suggest a 
walk in the air to settle their dinner. 

And then arose such a chorus of protestations as 
has seldom been heard. It was too cloudy to walk. 
It was too raw. It looked like snow. It looked 
like rain. Luther Gummidge said that he must be 
starting along home soon, anyway, bringing forth 
the acid query from Mrs. Gummidge as to whether 
or not he was bored. Lillian said that she felt a 
cold coming on, and added that something they had 
had for dinner must have been undercooked. And 

[196] 



if^ 



CHRISTMAS AFTERNOON 

so it went, back and forth, forth and back, up ana 
down, and in and out, until Mr. Gummidge's sug- 
gestion of a walk in the air was reduced to a tat- 
tered impossibility and the entire company glowed 
with ill-feeling. 

In the meantime, we must not forget the chil- 
dren. No one else could. Aunt Libbie said that 
she didn't think there was anything like children to 
make a Christmas; to which Uncle Ray, the one 
with the Masonic fob, said, "No, thank God! " 
Although Christmas is supposed to be the season 
of good cheer, you (or I, for that matter) couldn't 
have told, from listening to the little ones, but what 
it was the children's Armageddon season, when Na- 
ture had decreed that only the fittest should sur- 
vive, in order that the race might be carried on by 
the strongest, the most predatory and those pos- 
sessing the best protective coloring. Although there 
were constant admonitions to Fonlansbee to " Let 
Ormond have that whistle now; it's his," and to 
Arthur, Jr., not to be selfish, but to " give the kiddie- 
car to Effie; she's smaller than you are," the net 
result was always that Fonlansbee kept the whistle 
and Arthur, Jr., rode in permanent, albeit disputed, 
possession of the kiddie-car. Oh, that we mortals 
should set ourselves up against the inscrutable work- 
ings of Nature I 

[197] 



OF ALL THINGS ! 

Hallo! A great deal of commotion! That was 
Uncle George stumbling over the electric train, 
which had early in the afternoon ceased to func- 
tion and which had been left directly across the 




" Hallo ! A great deal of commotion ! 



threshold. A great deal of crying! That was Ar- 
thur, Jr., bewailing the destruction of his already 
useless train, about which he had forgotten until 
the present moment. A great deal of recrimination! 
That was Arthur, Sr., and George fixing it up. And 
finally a great crashing! That was Baby Lester 
pulling over the tree on top of himself, necessi- 
tating the bringing to bear of all of Uncle Ray's 

[198] 



4 



CHRISTMAS AFTERNOON 

knowledge of forestry to extricate him from the 
wreckage. 

And finally Mrs. Gummidge passed the Christ- 
mas candy around. Mr. Gummidge afterward ad- 
mitted that this was a tactical error on the part of 
his spouse. I no more believe that Mrs. Gum- 
midge thought they wanted that Chrismas candy 
than I believe that she thought they wanted the 
cold turkey which she later suggested. My opin- 
ion is that she wanted to drive them home. At any 
rate, that is what she succeeded in doing. Such 
cries as there were of " Ugh ! Don't let me see an- 
other thing to eat! " and " Take it away! " Then 
came hurried scramblings in the coat-closet for over- 
shoes. There were the rasping sounds made by 
cross parents when putting wraps on children. 
There were insincere exhortations to " come and see 
us soon " and to " get together for lunch some time." 
And, finally, there were slammings of doors and 
the silence of utter exhaustion, while Mrs. Gum- 
midge went about picking up stray sheets of wrap- 
ping paper. 

And, as Tiny Tim might say in speaking of 
Christmas afternoon as an institution, " God help 
us, every one." 



[199] 



XXII 

HAIL, VERNAL EQUINOX 1 

IF all that I hear is true, a great deal has been 
written, first and last, about that season which 
we slangily call "Spring"; but I don't remember 
ever having seen it done in really first-class form; — 
that is, in such a way that it left something with you 
to think over, something that you could put your 
finger on and say, " There, there is a Big, Vital 
Thought that I can carry away with me to my 
room." 

What Spring really needs is a regular press-agent 
sort of write-up, something with the Punch in it, 
an article that will make people sit up and say to 
themselves, " By George, there must be something 
in this Spring stuff, after all." 

What sort of popularity did Education have until 
correspondence schools and encyclopedias began to 
give publicity to it in their advertisements? Where 
would Music be to-day if it were not for the ex- 
hortations of the talking-machine and mechanical- 
piano companies telling, through their advertising- 
copy writers, of the spiritual exaltation that comes 

[200] 



HAIL, VERNAL EQUINOX! 

from a love of music? These things were all right 
in their way before the press-agent took hold of 
them, but they never could have hoped to reach 
their present position without him. 

Of course, all this has just been leading up to 
the point I want to make, — that something more 
ought to be written about Spring. When you con- 
sider that every one, including myself, agrees that 
nothing more should be written about it, I think 
that I have done rather well to prove as much as 
I have so far. And, having got this deep into the 
thing, I can't very well draw back now. 

Well then. Spring is a great season. Nobody will 
gainsay me that. Without it, we should crash right 
from Winter into Summer with no chance to shift 
to light-weight underwear. I could write a whole 
piece about that phase of it alone, and, if I were 
pressed for things to say, I myself could enlarge 
on it now, making up imaginary conversation of 
people who have been caught in balbriggans by the 
first sweltering day of summer. But I have so many 
more things to say about Spring that I can't stop 
to bother with deadwood like that. Such literary 
fillerbusting should be left to those who are not so 
full of their subject as I am. 

In preparing for this article, I thought it best 
to look up a little on the technical side of Spring, 

[201] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

about which so little is known, at least by me. And, 
would you believe it, the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
which claims in its advertisements not only to make 
its readers presidents of the Boards of Directors of 
any companies they may select, but also shows how 
easy it would be for Grandpa or Little Edna to carry 
the whole set about from room to room, if, by any 
possible chance they should ever want to, this same 
Encyclopedia Britannica makes no reference to 
Spring, except incidentally, along with Bed Springs 
and Bubbling Springs. 

This slight of one of our most popular seasons is 
probably due to the fact that Spring is not ex- 
clusively a British product and was not invented 
by a Briton. Had Spring been fortunate enough to 
have had the Second Earl of Stropshire-Stropshire- 
Stropshire as one of its founders, the Britannica 
could probably have seen its way clear to give it a 
five-page article, signed by the Curator of the Jade 
Department in the British Museum, and illustrated 
with colored plates, showing the effect of Spring 
on the vertical and transverse sections of the stamen 
of the South African Euphorbicese. 

I was what you might, but probably wouldn't, 
call stunned at not finding anything about the Sea- 
son of Love in the encyclopedia, for without that 
assistance what sort of a scientific article could 

[202] 



HAIL, VERNAL EQUINOX! 

I do on the subject? I am not good at improvising 
as I go along, especially in astronomical matters. 
But we Americans are not so easily thwarted. Quick 
as a wink I looked up " Equinox." 

There is a renewed agitation of late to abolish 
Latin from our curricula. Had I not known my 
Latin I never could have figured out what " equi- 
nox " meant, and this article would never have 
been written. Take that, Mr. Flexner! 

While finding " equinox," however, I came across 
the word " equilibrium," which is the word before 
you come to " equinox," and I became quite absorbed 
in what it had to say on the matter. There were a 
great many things stated there that I had never 
dreamed before, even in my wildest vagaries on the 
subject of equilibrium. For instance, did you know 
that if you cover the head of a bird, " as in hood- 
ing a falcon " (do you remember the good old days 
when you used to run away from school to hood fal- 
cons?) the bird is deprived of the power of volun- 
tary movement? Just think of that, deprived of 
the power of voluntary movement simply because its 
head is covered ! 

And, as if this were not enough, it says that the 
same thing holds true of a fish! If you should ever, 
on account of a personal grudge, want to get the bet- 
ter of a fish, just sneak up to him on some pretext 

[203] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

or other and suddenly cover its eyes with a cloth, 
and there you have it, helpless and unable to move. 
You may then insult it, and it can do nothing but 
tremble with rage. 

It is little practical things like this that you pick 
up in reading a good reference book, things that you 
would never get in ten years at college. 

For instance, take the word " equites," which fol- 
lows " equinox " in the encyclopedia. What do you 
know about equites, Mr. Businessman? Of course, 
you remember in a vague way that they were Ro- 
man horsemen or something, but, in the broader 
sense of the word, could you have told that the term 
" equites " came, in the time of Gains Gracchus, to 
mean any one who had four hundred thousand 
sesterces? No, I thought not. And yet that is a 
point which is apt to come up any day at the office. 
A customer from St. Paul might come in and, of 
course, you would take him out to lunch, hoping to 
land a big order. Where would you be if his hobby 
should happen to be " equites "? And if he should 
come out in the middle of the conversation with 
" By the way, do you remember how many sesterces 
it was necessary to have during the administration 
of Gains Gracchus in order to belong to the 
Equites? " if you could snap right back at him 
with "Four hundred thousand, I believe," the or- 

[204] 



i 



HAIL, VERNAL EQUINOX 1 

der would be assured. And if, in addition, you could 
volunteer the information that an excellent account 
of the family life of the Equites could be found 
in Mommsen's " Romisches Staatsrecht" Vol. 3, 
your customer would probably not only sign up for 




" If you could snap right back at him with * Four hundred 
thousand, I beHeve/ the order would be assured." 



a ten-year contract, but would insist on paying for 
the lunch. 

But, of course, this has practically nothing to do 
with Spring, or, as the boys call it, the " vernal 
equinox." The vernal equinox is a serious matter. 
In fact, I think I may say without violating any 
confidence, that it is the initial point from which the 
right ascensions and the longitudes of the heavenly 

[205] 



1 



OF ALL THINGS! 

bodies are measured. This statement will probably 
bring down a storm of ridicule on my head, but 
look at how Fulton was ridiculed. 

In fact, I might go even further and say that the 
way to seek out Spring is not to trail along with the 
poets and essayists into the woods and fields and 
stand about in the mud until a half-clothed bird 
comes out and peeps. If you really want to be in 
on the official advent of Spring, you may sit in a 
nice warm observatory and, entirely free from head- 
colds, proceed with the following sim.ple course: 

Take first the conception of a fictitious point 
which we shall call, for fun, the !Mean Equinox. 
This Mean Equinox moves at a nearly uniform rate, 
slowly varying from century to century. 

Now here comes the trick of the thing. The Mean 
Equinox is merely a decoy, and, once you have 
determined it, you shift suddenly to the True 
Equinox which you can tell, according to Professor 
A. M. Clerk's treatise on the subject, because it 
moves around the !Mean Equinox in a period equal 
to that of the moon's nodes. Now all you have to 
do is to find out what the moon's nodes are (isn't 
it funny that you can be as familiar with an ob- 
ject as you are with the moon and see it almost 
every night, and yet never know that it has even one 
node, not to mention nodes?) and then find out how 

[206J 



HAIL, VERNAL EQUINOX 




"On the subject of spring's 

arrival intuition may be led 

astray." 

fast they move. This done and you have discov- 
ered the Vernal Equinox, or Spring, and without 
spilling a dactyl. 
How much simpler this is than the old, romantic 

[207] 



OF ALL THINGS I 

way of determining when Spring had come! A poet 
has to depend on his intuition for information, and, 
on the subject of Spring's arrival, intuition may be 
led astray by any number of things. You may be 
sitting over one of those radiators which are con- 
cealed under window-seats, for instance, and before 
you are aware of it feel what you take to be the first 
flush of Spring creeping over you. It would be ob- 
viously premature to go out and write a poem on 
Youth and Love and Young Onions on the strength 
of that. 

I once heard of a young man who in November 
discovered that he had an intellectual attachment 
for a certain young woman and felt that married 
life with her would be without doubt a success. But 
he could never work himself up into sufficient emo- 
tional enthusiasm to present the proposition to her 
in phrases that he knew she had been accustomed to 
receive from other suitors. He knew that she 
wouldn't respond to a proposal of marriage couched 
in terms of a real estate transaction. Yet such were 
the only ones that he felt himself capable of at 
the moment under the prevailing weather conditions. 
So, knowing something of biology, he packed his lit- 
tle bag and rented an alcove in a nearby green-house, 
where he basked in the intensified sun-warmth and 
odor of young tube roses, imtil with a cry, he 

[208] 



HAIL, VERNAL EQUINOX! 

smashed the glass which separated him from his 
heart's desire and tore aroimd the corner to her 
house, dashing in the back door and flinging him- 
self at her feet as she was whipping some cream, 




" Spring." 

and there poured forth such a torrent of ardent sen- 
timents that there was really nothing that the poor 
girl could do but marry him that afternoon. 

In fact, if you want to speak astronomically 
(some people do), you may define Spring even more 
definitely. Since we are all here together, and good 
friends, let us take the center of the earth as origin, 
and, once we have done this, the most natural fun- 
damental axis is, obviously, the earth's rotation. The 
fundamental plane perpendicular to it is the plane 
of the equator. That goes without saying. 

[209] 



OF ALL THINGS! 

Now, here we go! Coordinates referred to in this 
system are termed equatorial, and I think that you 
will agree with me that nothing could be fairer than 
that. Very well, then. Since this is so, we may 
define Spring by the following geometric represen- 
tation in which the angle ZOP, made by the radius 
vector with the fundamental plane, shows a spring- 
like tendency. 

This drawing we may truthfully entitle " Spring," 
and while it hasn't perhaps the color found in Bot- 
ticelli's painting of the same name, yet it just as 
truthfully represents Spring in these parts as do 
the unstable sort of ladies in the more famous pic- 
ture. 

I only wish that I had more space in which to 
tell what my heart is full of in connection with this 
subject. I really have only just begun. 



TABLOID EDITIONS 



THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE 

What I Have Made Myself Learn About You 

Being An Account of How One Business Man Made the 
Little Things Count. Do You? 

MY business (rubber goods) was in a bad way. 
Somehow I couldn't seem to make it return 
enough to pay my income tax with. My wife and I 
were frankly upset. 

At last one morning she came to me and said: 
" Fred, the baby will soon be seven months old and 
will have to have some sort of vocational training. 
What are we to do?" 

That night was the bluest night I have ever spent. 
I thought that the end had come. Then, suddenly, 
the thought struck me : " Why not try character- 
selling? " 

This may sound foolish to you. That is because it 
is foolish. But it did the trick. 

I began to sell my personality. Every man that 
came into my store I took aside and showed him 
different moods. First, I would tell him a funny 
story, to prove to him that I was more than a mere 
business automaton. Then I would relate a pathetic 
incident I had seen on the street a v/eek or two ago. 
This disclosed my heart. Then I did a fragment of 

[213] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

a bare-foot dance and sketched a caricature of Lloyd 
George, to let him see that I was a man of the world. 
After this, I was ready to sell him what he came in 
for, and he would go away carrying a very definite 
impression of my personal characteristics — and some 
of my goods, in a bundle. 

A week of selling rubber-goods in this manner, and 
I was on the vaudeville stage, earning $250 a week. 
How much do you earn? 



Interesting People 
A Man W^ho Made Good W^ith Newts 

SOME day, if you ever happen to be in Little 
Falls, turn to your right and you will see a pros- 
perous-looking establishment run by Ira S. Whip, 
known throughout Little Falls as the newt king. 
Starting in with practically nothing but two con- 
genial newts, Mr. Whip has, in the past ten years, 
raised no less than 4,000 of these little lizard-like 
animals, all of which had to be thrown away, as 
there is practically no market for pet newts except 
for incidental roles in gold-fish tanks. But Mr. 
Whip did what he set out to do, and that counts for 
a lot in this life. Can you say as much? 

[214] 



L 



THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE 

The Man Who Made Good 
The story of a man who made good 

ORRIE WETMORE sat disconsolately in the 
fountain in Madison Square Park. He was 
lonely. He was a failure. . . . Yes, he was. Don't 
contradict me. He was a terrible failure. And, as 
I said before, early in this story, he was lonely. 

" I have fallen down on the job," he murmured to 
Admiral Farragut's statue. " I have not made good." 

Suddenly a kind hand rested on his shoulder. He 
turned to face the pansy-trainer, who keeps the 
flower-beds in the Park in touch with the seasons. 

" Don't give in, my boy," said the old man. " Re- 
member the words of Henley, who instituted the 
famous Henley Regatta and so made a name for 
himself: * I am the master of my Fate. I am the 
Captain of my Soul.' " 

" By George," murmured Lorrie to the statue of 
Salmon P. Chase, " I can make good, and I will make 
good!" 

And, with these words, he climbed out of the 
fountain and made his way resolutely across the 
square to the great store of Marshall Field and 
Co. (Advt.) 

In seven weeks he was a member of the firm. 

[215] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 



Are You Between the Ages of 7 and 94? 

If so, what this eminent growth specialist says here applies 
directly to you and to your family 

EVERY man, woman and child between the ages 
of 7 and 94 is going through a process of 
growth or metamorphosis, whether they know it or 
not. Are you making the most of this opportunity 
which is coming to you (if your age falls within the 
magic circle given above) every day of your life? 
Do you realize that, during this crucial period, you 
have it in your power to make what you will of your- 
self, provided only that you know how to go about 
it and make no false steps? 

As you grow from day to day, either mentally, 
morally, or physically, you can say to yourself, on 
awakening in the morning: 

" To-day I will develop. I will grow bigger, either 
mentally, morally or physically. Maybe, if it is a 
nice, warm day, I will grow in all three ways at 
once." 

And, sure enough, when evening finds you return- 
ing home from the work of the day, it will also find 
you in some way changed from the person you were 
in the morning, either through the shedding of the 
dry epidermis from the backs of your hands (which, 
according to one of Nature's most wonderful proc- 

[216] 



THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE 

esses, is replaced by new epidermis as soon as the 
old is gone), or through the addition of a fraction 
of an inch to your height or girth, or through some 
other of the inscrutable alchemies of Nature. 

Think this over as you go to work, to-day, and 
see if it doesn't tell you something about your 
problem. 



How I Put Myself on the Map 

IT was seven o'clock at night when I first struck 
New York. I had come from a Middle Western 
town to make my fortune as a writer, and I was 
already discouraged. I knew no one in the Big City, 
and had been counting on my membership in the 
National Geographic Society to find me friends 
among my fellow-members in town. But I soon dis- 
covered that the fraternity spirit in the East was 
much less cordial than in my home district, and I 
realized, too late, that I was all alone. 

With a few coins that my father had slipped into 
my hand as I left home, I engaged a tiny suite at 
the St. Regis and there set about my writing. 

The first 10,000 manuscripts which I sent out, I 
now have. (I am at present working them over into 
a serial for the Saturday Evening Post weekly, from 
which I expect to make $2 S,ooo) . But that is beside 

[217] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

the point. For the purposes of the present narrative, 
I was a failure. The manager of the hotel was 
pressing me for my rent, which was already several 
hours overdue. I had not tipped the chamber-maid 
since breakfast. I sat looking out at my window, 
staring at the squalid wall of the Hotel Ritz. I had 
met New York face to face — and I had lost. 

No, not lost! There was still one chance left. 
I sat down and, with feverish haste, wrote out a 
glowing account of my failure. I spared no detail 
of my degradation, even to taking fruit from the 
hotel table to my room. 

Then I began to fabricate. I told how I had 
overcome all these handicaps and had made a suc- 
cess of myself. I lied. I said that I was now draw- 
ing down $200,000 a year, but that I had never for- 
gotten my old friends. It was a good yarn, but it 
took me a long while to make it up. And when, at 
last, it was ready, I sent it to the American Magazine. 

This is it! 



How Insane Are You? 

FOLLOWING is a test used in all State Hospitals 
to determine the fitness of the inmates for occa- 
sional shore leave. Try it on yourself and see where 
you get off. 

[218] 



THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE 

Test No. i 

If you really are the reincarnation of Learning, 
write something here . . . but if you are being 
hounded by a lot of relatives whom you dislike, ring 
and walk in. Then, granting all this, how does it 
come about that you, a member of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission, wear no collar? . . . Ha, 
ha, we caught you there! But otherwise, write any 
letter beginning with w in this space. Yes, there is 
the space, — what's the matter with you? Go back 
and look again. . . . You win. Now, in spite of 
what the neighbors say, give three reasons for not 
giving three reasons why this proves that you are 
sane, or^ as the case may be. 



[219] 



HARPER^S MAGAZINE 

Through the Dobnidja with Gun and Camera 

THERE was a heavy mist falling as we left 
Ilanlac, rendering the cozbars (native doblacs) 
doubly indistinguishable. This was unfortunate, as 
we had planned on taking many photographs, some 
of which are reproduced here. 

Our party consisted of seven members of the So- 
ciety: Mol winch, young Houghbotham, Capt. 
Ramp, and myself, together with fourteen native 
barhudos {luksni who are under the draft age), a 
boat's crew, two helpers, and some potted tongue. 
Lieut. Furbearing, the Society's press-agent, had 
sailed earlier in the week, and was to join us at 
Curtea de Argesh. 

Before us, as we progressed, lay the Tecuci, shim- 
mering in the reflected light of the sun (sun). They 
were named by their discoverer, Joao Galatz, after 
his uncle, whose name was Wurgle, or, as he was 
known among the natives, "Wurgle." From that 
time (1808) imtil 1898, no automobile was ever seen 
on one of the Tecuci, although many of the inhabi- 

[220] 



HARPER'S MAGAZINE 

tants subsisted entirely on what we call "cottage- 
cheese." 

The weevils of this district {Curculionidce) are 
remarkable for their lack of poise. We saw several 
of them, just at sundown, when, according to an old 
native legend, the weevil comes out to defy the God 
of Acor, his ancient enemy, and never, not even in 
Castanheira, have I seen weevils more embarrassed 
than those upon whom we came suddenly at a bend 
in the Selch River. 

Early morning found us filing up the Buzeau Val- 
ley, with the gun-bearers and bus-boys in single-file 
behind us, and a picturesque lot they were, too, with 
their lisle socks and queer patch-pockets. In tak- 
ing a picture of them, I walked backward into the 
Buzeau River, which delayed the party, as I had, 
in my bag, the key with which the potted tongue 
cans were to be opened. 

We were fortunate enough to catch several male 
puffins, which were so ingenuous as to eat the carpet- 
tacks we offered them. The puffin (Thalassidroma 
buleverii), is easily distinguishable from the more 
effete robin of America because the two birds are 
similar in no essential points. This makes it conven- 
ient for the naturalist, who might otherwise get them 
mixed. Puffins are hunted principally for their com- 
panionable qualities, a domesticated puffin being 

[221] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

held the equal — if not quite — of the average 
Dobrudjan housewife in many respects, such as, for 
instance, self-respect. 

It was late in the afternoon of the third day, when 
we finally reached Dimbovitza, and the cool Hernia 
was indeed refreshing. It had been, we one and all 
agreed, a most interesting trip, and we vowed that 
we should not forget our Three Days in the 
Dobrudja. 

Dead Leaves 

** A INT you got them dishes done up yet, 

J\ Irma? " 

A petulant voice from what, in Central New Eng- 
land, is called the " sittin' room," penetrated the cool 
silence of the farm-house kitchen. Irma Hathaway 
passed her hand heavily before her eyes. 

" Yes, Ma," she replied wearily, as she threw a 
cup at the steel engraving of " The Return of the 
Mayflower " which hung on the kitchen wall. She 
wondered when she would die. 

A cold wind blew along the corridor which con- 
nected the kitchen with the wood-shed. Then, as if 
disgruntled, it blew back again, like a man returning 
to his room after a fresh handkerchief. Irma 
shuddered. It was all so inexplicably depressing. 

For eighteen years the sun had never been able 

[222] 



HARPER'S MAGAZINE 

to shine in Bemis Corners. God knows it had tried. 
But there had always been something imponderable, 
something monstrously bleak, which had thrown 
itself, like a great cloak, between the warm light of 
that body and the grim reality of Bemis Corners. 

" If Eben had only known," thought Irma, and 
buried her face in the soapy water. 

Some one entered the room from the wood-shed, 
stamping the snow from his boots. She knew, with- 
out looking up, that it was Ira. 

" Why hev you come? " she said softly, lifting her 
moist eyes to him. It was not Ira. It was the hired 
man. She sobbed pitifully and leaped upon the 
roller-towel which hung on the door, pulling it round 
and round like a captive squirrel in a revolving cage. 

" It ain't no use," she moaned. 

And, through the cadavers of the apple-trees in 
the orchard behind the house, there rattled a wind 
from the sea, the sea to which men go down in 
ships never to return, telling of sorrow and all that 
sort of thing. 

" Fate," some people call it. 

To Irma Hathaway it was all the same. 



[223] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

June, July, August 

^T^ULlPSy crocuses and chard, 

1 And the wax bean 
In the hack yard. 

And the open road to the land of dreams^ 
With the heavy swirl 
Of the singing streams. 
Oh! boy! 



Unpublished Letters of Mark Twain 

With a foreword by Albert Bigelow Paine* 

Foreword 

THIS letter from Mark Twain to Mr. Horace J. 
Borrow of Hartford has recently been called 
to my attention by a niece of Mr. Borrow's who now 
lives in Glastonbury. I have no reason to believe 
that the lady is a charlatan, in fact, I have often 
heard Mark Twain speak of Mr. Borrow in the 
highest terms. 



* The complete works of Mark Twain, with complete forewords by 
Mr. Paine are, oddly enough, published by Harper and Bros, who, 
oddly enough, also publish this magazine. We celebrate this coinci- 
dence by offering the complete set to our readers on easy and friendly 
terms. 

[224] 



HARPER'S MAGAZINE 

Mr, Horace /. Borrow 
Hartford, Connecticut 
Dear Mr. Borrow: Enclosed find check for ten 
dollars ($io) in payment of my annual dues for the 
year 189 1-2. 

Yours truly, 

(Signed) S. L. Clemens. 



Highways and By-Ways in Old Fall River 

THE chance visitor to Fall River may be said, 
like the old fisherman in " Bartholomew Fair," 
to have " seen half the world, without tasting its 
savor." Wandering down the Main Street, with its 
clanging trolley-cars and noisy drays, one wonders 
(as, indeed, one may well wonder), if all this is a 
manifestation so much of Fall River as it is of that 
for which Fall River stands. 

Frankly, I do not know. 

But there is something in the air, something in- 
effable in the swirl of the smoke from the towering 
stacks, which sings^ to the rhythm of the clashing 
shuttles and humming looms, of a day when old 
gentlemen in belted raglans and cloth-topped boots 
strolled through these streets, bearing with them the 
legend of mutability. Perhaps " mutability " is too 
strong a word. Fall Riverians would think so. 

[225] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

And the old Fall River Line! What memories 
does that name not awaken in the minds of globe- 
trotters? Or, rather, what memories does it awaken? 
William Lloyd Garrison is said to have remarked 
upon one occasion to Benjamin Butler that one of the 
most grateful features of Fall River was the night- 
boat for New York. To which Butler is reported to 
have replied: " But, my dear Lloyd, there is no 
night-boat to New York, and there won't be until 
along about 1875 or even later. So your funny 
crack, in its essential detail, falls flat." 

But, regardless of all this, the fact remains that 
Fall River is Fall River, and that it is within easy 
motoring distance of Newport, which offers our art 
department countless opportunities for charming 
illustrations. 



The Editor's Drawer 

LITTLE Bobby, aged five, saying his prayers, 
had come to that most critical of diplomatic 
crises : the naming of relatives to be blessed. 

" Why don't I ask God to bless Aunt Mabel? " he 
queried, looking up with a roguish twinkle in his blue 
eyes. 
" But you do, Bobby," answered his mother. 
" So I do," was his prompt reply. 

[226] 



HARPER'S MAGAZINE 



LITTLE Willy, aged seven, was asked by his 
teacher to define the word " confuse." 
" ' Confuse ' is what my daddy says when he looks 
at his watch," said Willy. The teacher never asked 
that question again. At least, not of Willy. 



LITTLE Gertrude, aged three, was saying her 
prayers. " Is God everywhere? " she asked. 

" Yes, dear, everywhere," answered her mother. 

" Everywhere? '' she persisted. 

" Yes, dear, everywhere,^' repeated her mother, all 
unsuspecting. 

"Then He must be like Uncle Ned," said the 
little tot. 

" Why, Gertrude, what makes you say that? " 

" Because I heard Daddy say that Uncle Ned was 
everywhere," was the astounding reply. 



[227] 



THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 

THE LAST MATCH 

By Roy Comfort Ashurst 

SLOWLY the girl in the green hat approached the 
swinging door of the hotel. 
She was thinking. 

A man more versed in the ways of womankind 
than Ned Pillsbury might, perhaps, have perceived 
that she was also glancing surreptitiously upwards 
through the dark fringe of lashes which veiled her 
brown gypsy eyes, but Ned was not a trained ob- 
server in such matters. To him, as he sat in the 
large, roomy leather chair in the lobby, the only 
reaction was 

(Continued on page 49) 



ARE YOU SURE OF YOUR CRANK-SHAFT? 

The answer to this question is the answer to the 
peace of mind with which you operate your motor. 
Whether you are the operator of an automobile, or 
one of those intrepid spirits to whom the world-war 
has given the vision of flying through the air at 

[228] 



THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 

175 miles an hour, you need to give pause and say to 
yourself: 

"Just how much faith can I put in my crank- 
shaft? " 

And if it is a Zimco crank-shaft, made in the fac- 
tory of a thousand sky-lights, you may be sure that 
it will stand the test. 

Zimco crank-shafts have that indefinable quality 
which gives them personality among crank-shafts. 
You know a Zimco when you see one and you feel 
that it is an old friend. It does everything but speak. 
And that its host of friends do for it. 

Let us send you free our handsome little booklet 
on " After-the- War-Problems." 



(Continued from page 8) 
one of amazement that there could be such a beautiful person 
aHve in this generation. 

Ned was a young man of great possibilities, but few proba- 
bilities. Born in the confusion of an up-state city, and edu- 
cated in the hub-bub of a large college, on whose foot-ball 
team he had distinguished himself in the position of left-half- 
back, he had never been so fortunate as to receive that quiet 
instruction in dark brown eyelashes and their potentialities 
which has been found to be so highly essential to the equipment 
(Continued on page J07) 



INTRODUCING THE 7-TON GARGANTUA 

TRUCK 

This important announcement is made by the 
Gargantua Company with a full realization of its 

[229] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

significance. We realize that we are creating a new 
thing in trucks. 

The Gargantua combines all the qualities of the 
truck with the conveniences of a Fall River boat. 
Its transmission system has been called "The Queen 
of Transmissions." The efficacy of its bull-pinions 
in the tractor attachment has been the subject of 
enthusiastic praise from bull-pinion experts on all 
continents. 

The Gargantua is the result of a dream. Henry 
L. McFern (now president of the Gargantua Co.), 
was the dreamer. Mr. McFern wanted something 
that would revolutionize the truck business, and yet 
still be a truck. He gave it the thought of all his 
waking hours. His friends called him a " dreamer," 
but Henry McFern only smiled. When first he 
brought out the model of the Gargantua it was 
called " McFern's Folly," but Henry McFern only 
smiled the more. And when the time came for the 
test, it was seen that the " dreamer " of South Bend 
had given the world a new Idea. 



(Continued from page 4Q) 
of a man of the world to-day. He knew that women were 
strange creatures, for this popular superstition reaches even 
to the recesses of the most exclusive of male retreats, but 
further than that he was uninformed. He had, it is true, like 
many another young man, felt the influence of certain pairs 
of blue eyes 

(Continued on page 113) 

[230] 



1 



THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 

I AM THE STRENGTH OF AGES 

Tl I have sprung from the depths of the hills. 

T[ Before the rivers were brought forth, or even 
before the green leaves in their softness made the 
landscape, I was your servant. 

^ From the bowels of the earth, where men toil in 
darknesss, I come, bringing a message of insuperable 
strength. 

TI From sun to sun I meet and overcome the forces 
of nature, brothers of mine, yet opponents; kindred, 
yet foes. 

T[ I am silent, but my voice re-echoes beyond the 
ends of the earth. 

Tl I am master, yet I am slave. 

Tf I am Woonsocket Wrought Iron Pipe, " the 
Strongest in the Long Run." (Trademark.) 

Send for illustrated booklet entitled 

"The Romance of Iron Pipe" 



(Continued from page loy) 
which had come into his life during the years when he was in 
susceptible moods, but such occurrences were not the result of 
any realization on his part of their significance. They were 
in the same category of physical phenomena as includes measles 
or chicken-pox, for example, — the direct result of a certain 
{Continued on page 125) 



[231] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

WHY WORRY OVER CHISEL TROUBLES? 

" You've got the right kind of chisel there. I see 
it's a Blimco. I've always found that Blimco chisels 
stand up longer under everyday usage, and I tell my 
foremen to see to it that the men always have their 
Blimcoes and no other. I have tried the others, but 
have always come back to the Blimco. I suppose it 
is because the Blimco is made by master-workmen, 
supervised by experts and sold only by dealers who 
know the best tools. When you see a Blimco in a 
dealer's window, you may know that that dealer is a 
man of discrimination. The discriminating workman 
always uses a Blimco. ' The Chisel of Distinction.^ 
Clip this coupon and send it NOW for our instructive 
booklet ' Chiselling Prosperity '." 

(Continued from page 113) 
temporary debility which renders the patient susceptible to 
infection, 

Ned Pillsbury was therefore somewhat overcome by the 
vision of the girl with the green hat, and suffered from that 
feeling of pioneering emotion which must have affected Mr. 
Balboa who, according to the poet, stood "silent on a peak in 
Darien" survey- 

(Continued on page 140) 

MAKE YOUR PISTON-RINGS WORK FOR 

YOU 

Why should you persist in being ashamed of your 
piston-rings? 

[232] 



THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 

Why should you make your wife and daughter 
suffer the humiliation which comes from knowing 
that you are using an inferior make? 

" Emancipator " Piston-Rings cost more than ordi- 
nary piston-rings, but they are worth it. They are 
worth more even than we ask. 

What would it mean to you to know that you were 
not losing steam power because of a faulty piston- 
ring? Wouldn't it be worth a few extra dollars? 

Napoleon once said that an army marches on its 
stomach. 

If this has any relation to piston-rings, we fail to 
see it. But it has as much relation to piston-rings 
as a matter of price does when steam economy is at 
stake. 

" Emancipator " Piston-Rings bring twice the 
power with one-half the trouble. That's why we call 
them " Emancipator." 

Ask your grocer about " Emancipators." He will 
tell you to ask your garage-man. In the meantime, 
let us send you our catalog. 



(Continued from page 125) 
jng the Pacific. He was aware of a strange exaltation cours- 
ing through his veins, and before he knew it, he was on his 
feet and pushing through the revolving door in the compart- 
ment behind the green hat. 

{Continued on page 156) 

[233] 



TABLOID EDITIONS 

YOU, MR. LEATHER-BELTING-USERI 

What is your problem? 

Do you wake up in the morning with green spots 
before your eyes? Are you depressed? Does the 
thought of a day's work with an unsatisfactory belt- 
ing weigh upon your mind, bringing on acidosis, 
hardening of the arteries, and a feeling of opposition 
to the League of Nations? 

If so, let us tackle your problem for you. 

We have built up a service department which 
stands alone in its field. For sixteen years we have 
been making it the perfect institution that it is 
to-day. 

Bring your belting troubles to Mr. Henry W. 
Wurlitz, who is at the head of our service depart- 
ment, and he will set you right. He will show you 
the way to a Bigger, Better, Belting outlook. 



(Continued from page 140) 
"I beg your pardon," he said softly, as they emerged on 
the street, "but did you drop this flask?" 

She turned quickly and faced him. There was a twinkle 
in her dark brown eyes as she answered him: 
(To he continued) 



[234] 



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